Use Of Satire In Catch 22

Satire in catch – 22 Satire can be defined as the use of humor to ridicule or expose the vices of people in the society (Gassner and Quinn 741). The term can generally be applied to all those situations when a character is presented in a comical yet ridiculous way so that the readers can easily see the folly that the writer intents to highlight. It is a ‘soft’ way of pointing out the flaws in character of individuals or institutions in society, especially when these are being pointed out in otherwise important members or institutions of the society, which makes direct ridicule difficult. This presentation will briefly look at the use of satire in the novel Catch 22 by Heller. The type of satire used in this novel is the comical satire, which means that humor is a strong ingredient in the efforts of the author to criticize the elements he dislikes. The author achieves this by making the audience laugh at the individual, thereby exposing the flaws. The novel centers on a combat pilot, Yossarian, who tries his best to leave the battle field and return home as fighting rages in World War II. He gives different types of excuses, but everything fails because of the Catch – 22 rule, which states that pilots must request to be grounded only if they are insane, and one needs to be sane to ask for this

Yossarian is assigned to bomb a target in bologna, but he knows that this is one of the most guarded areas of the combat zone. He remembers that there is a map with a line indicating the farthest the allied troops reach, meaning bombs can only be dropped beyond the line to avoid inflicting casualties on their own troops. He sneaks into the room that houses the map at night and moves the line north, which is interpreted to mean that the allied troops have taken the city, thus the mission aborts. Ridiculously, again, the military seniors do not bother to check the reality of this new