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Insanity In Catch 22 By Joseph Heller

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Insanity vs Sanity
Insanity devours one's mind causes them to think inefficiently. It alters the mind, making it nearly impossible to control one's thoughts.[1] It is evident that in the novel catch 22 by , Joseph Heller, the characters are suffering from insanity due to multiple factors.
Catch 22 portrays a world where insanity and sanity have traded places, where a complete normal person is considered “insane”and a insane person is considered a hero. During the novel, as well as the real world, it is no question that it is impossible to live as a sane person in an insane world.[3] Heller supports this theme with the use of a very important character through the novel named Yossarian. Yossarian is a part a American Bomber squadron during World War II. Yossarian happens to be one the characters that is “sane”, living in an …show more content…

(Heller 52) Moreover, the effects of catch 22 show that insane people are really the sanest while the people that are normal are considered the “mad men.” This is shown when Heller stated “Mcwatt was the craziest combat man…probably because he was perfectly sane.”(Heller 65) Mcwatt ironically has started to enjoy the missions with no complaints which shows he has lost his mind in the eyes of a sane person but is seen as normal to everyone

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Annotated Bibliography: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Aldridge, John W. "THE LOONY HORROR OF IT ALL- 'CATCH-22 ' TURNS 25. " The New York Times ON THE WEB. 26 Oct. 1986. Web. 5 Mar. 2016.

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In The Alienist the theme of insanity is extremely prevalent. During the story Kreizler is involved with many people who have been deemed insane by the society they live in. Kreizler with his unorthodox methods and way of thinking understands that some are disturbed and may do bad things if lead down that path. Kreizler has multiple cases where if given the chance to be a respectable citizen some patients will change for the better. For example Stevie Taggert a boy who has caused trouble to others his whole life by participating in illegal acts and Cyrus Montrose who killed a drunk police officer with a butcher knife for beating up a prostitute in the brothel that Cyrus worked in.

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In Catch-22 a common theme is that it is not possible to live sanely in an insane environment. Joseph Heller, the author, uses numerous examples of the main character, Yossarian, attempting to stay sane even though the people around him have lost their sanity. Because Yossarian tries to make sensible decisions, he is seen, by the others, to be a madman. An example would be when Yossarian would not wear his uniform and instead walked around in the nude. When Yossarian and Milo are talking, Millo inquires to why Yossarian is not wearing his uniform to which Yossarian replies “I don’t want to”.

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This madness in Mcmurphy gives the men hope throughout the novel. The irrational behavior can be judge as reasonable in many cases. Mcmurphy is a big, loud and confident man. He’s different from many other patients in the ward. When he first entered the ward he was laughing and telling jokes.

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Not So Fast For some reason, life just keeps getting harder and harder-there is just no easy way out. Unfortunately, because the United States is such a competitive nation-we are always making choices out to be more difficult than they need to be. The highly competitive territory of the United States, results in high anxiety over making difficult choices to try and always be better than other people. However, Joseph Heller’s examples of difficult life choices, are just pure insanity. In the novel, Catch-22, Joseph Heller establishes the ongoing theme that life is full of difficult choices and no-win situations, by using conflict, symbols, and tone.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, considers the qualities in which society determines sanity. The label of insanity is given when someone is different from the perceived norm. Conversely, a person is perceived as sane when their behavior is consistent with the beliefs of the majority. Although the characters of this novel are patients of a mental institution, they all show qualities of sanity. The book is narrated by Chief Brodmen, an observant chronic psychiatric patient, who many believe to be deaf and dumb.

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Catch 22 Paper In Catch 22 by Joseph Heller the book is a complex novel. Heller uses many themes, does not have the storyline in chronological order and often uses irony in his descriptions. Many of the themes can be compared to other literature. One of the themes that can be compared is fear in war.

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In a situation devoid of any strict set of values and standards, no one is impervious to shifting morals. In Joseph Heller's Catch 22, each character faces a predicament of whether, when indulging in some sort of self-interest, they will care for or disregard others. In the midst of death and uncertainty, Yossarian tries to hold onto his humanity as a way of maintaining his morality while those around him either die because of others or fall into their own selfishness. Yet, while he fears death and the dehumanization of war, he does not forfeit the lives of others in exchange of his own.

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In the book “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest” Ken Kesey shows that the “insanity” of the patients is really just normal insecurities and their label as insane by society is immoral. This appears in the book concerning Billy Bibbits problem with his mom, Harding's problems with his wife, and that the patients are in the ward

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After its publication in 1961, readers of Joseph Heller's first novel Catch-22 found themselves enamored with its unique style and approach to its subject matter. People all over the United States found it hilarious, sad, and horribly offensive. They howled with laughter only to pick up the phone, wiping tears from their eyes, and read pages to friends and family. When talking about the novel, many people focus on its merit as a satirical work. However, people often seem to forget the final chapters.

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Heavily critiqued but widely honored as one of today’s most captivating and literary intriguing books of the past century, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 presents a story displaying one of the more forgotten aspects of WWII which is base life. Catch-22 is a book set during World War II where an American B-52 bombardier named Yossarian communicates his experiences and life at a U.S. Air Force base on a small island named Pianosa located west of Italy. Catch 22 is renowned by many who have enjoyed the book’s realism and use of satire, but some people mainly teachers believe the book to be to mature for students of the high school age. In some cases the book has been outright banned such as the case in Strongsville, Ohio where the school district banned the book from school libraries due to the use of profanity and racial slurs repeated often throughout the

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Insanity is a disease capable of making a person lose control of themselves. On the other hand, sanity is when a person is what others call “normal”. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe the narrator kills a man and he is confessing to the cops about it. He confesses how long the murder took and what he did each night and how he executed the murder. However, the narrator is not guilty because of the reason of insanity.

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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.

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Another defense sometimes used by prosecutors is the plea of "temporary insanity"; this essentially amounts to a claim of a crime of passion. In an eerily similar manner to crimes committed under the influence of PTSD, this defense is used for someone who had a temporary loss of being able to tell right from wrong due to an extreme traumatic experience. Most jurors are unsympathetic to this claim (Rubinstein). The largely unseen counter worlds of empirical reality, behavioral advance, scientific discovery, and philosophical inquiry paint quite a different picture. Empirically, the insanity defense is rarely used, is less frequently successful, and generally results in maximum security facilities (often far more restrictive than prisons or reformatories) for far longer periods of time than the defendants would have been subject to had they been sentenced criminally (Perlin.)

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This can be related to the components of psychological model of normality. Insanity can be a product of the problems in unconscious state. The ego’s failure to keep the balance settling the conflicts between id and super ego may lead to insanity about which patient may not be aware of. Insanity can be a learned behavior by classical or operant conditioning, developed by the patient to gain attention. Insanity can develop as a result of abnormal thinking which can be treated effectively by changing the thinking process.

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