The criticism behind Catch-22’s Post-Modern Aantihero The postmodern movement in the late 20th century opened plenty of doors to new traits to culture, arts, and others. Among these was literature, which had a more cynical worldview in its works. Its abundance in irony, black humor, fragmentation and hyperrealism became some of its most distinguishable traits which made it an enjoyable literary movement. With the postmodern movement reaching its high peak with Catch-22, analysis of postmodern literature became inevitable. Some of the recurring themes in works of postmodern literature turned out to be paranoia, minimalism, metafiction and twists on heroism. Heroism came to be a debatable topic in analysis of postmodern literature because of the arguable diversity between the novels. However, it’s sole purpose was not just to entertain, but like most art, for the author to express themselves in a way they haven’t been able to. As a result, Catch-22 presents Yossarian as an anti-hero used by its author, Joseph Heller, to introduce his opinion on war, war heroes and the current social status of the United States. The altered perception of heroism, believed to be present in only some works of postmodern literature, is used to convey the author’s state of mind to the reader in an …show more content…
Without responsibility, an individual is not able to tend to matters that are important and cannot deal with the consequences that come with their actions. A hero must be responsible in order to be fulfill their duties, otherwise a hero that is irresponsible does nothing and cannot react. Accordingly, the characters in Catch-22 cannot be considered as heroes due to their actions and the lack of responsibility that comes with them. All in all, responsibility is a human attribute that is required for one to be able to be called a hero, and in the end, the characters of the squadron fail to be