"And Heller's book deconstructs all wars and establishments: ostensibly about World War II, but written after Korea, and published during Vietnam, Catch-22 parodies the American business, religious, and political hegemonies that the military echelons reflect."
Catch-22's approach to the mockery doesn't merely apply to World War 2 exclusively, but universally to most wars. Heller understood that there isn't much difference between wars through history. As a result, he is capable of breaking down all wars and their affiliated institutions. This revealed the imperfections and ridiculous ways of the American political and social culture. As much as it mocks American ways, the novel is very much American in the sense that the author is indeed American and the ideas were very American.
"Heller has
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Thus, Yossarian's refusal to be tempted by the Colonels who would save him at the price of betrayal of his fellow pilots, his commitment to himself, to the young sister of a dead whore, to Sweden—freedom—turn Catch-22 from a war novel of despair to a universal fiction that ends in hope, in the admission of the protagonist's humanity, into a leap for freedom and responsibility (just as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man will rise from underground), in the acceptance of contingency and a war against war."
The satirical humor of the novel is merely something of face-value. It is the result of an underlying world of tribulation that only people experiencing it first hand could fathom. He used Yossarian's commitment to what is good to establish the possibility of hope in the story. This can be used to describe what has been suggested to be the dedication of an American, particularly one in service. America has an ideal of hope even in the worst of plights, he reflects this ideology in the plot of