The Structure and Meaning of 'Catch-22' Essay Example
The Structure and Meaning of 'Catch-22'
Robert Merrill
The critical reputation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) is a curiosity. The book is often praised, even celebrated, yet most critics are still puzzled by such basic matters as the structure of the novel. Friends and foes alike tend to agree that the novel is hilarious but also that it is repetitious and essentially formless. Norman Mailer [see excerpt above] speaks for all those who share this view when he says like yard goods, one could cut it anywhere. One could take a hundred pages from the middle of Catch-22 and not even the author could be certain they were gone. As it happens, the author is rather certain that he would notice. Heller has said that Catch-22 is not to my mind a formless novel. If anything, it was constructed almost meticulously, and with a meticulous concern to give the appearance of a formless novel. Heller's remarks may seem defensive or at least exaggerated, but a close examination of Catch-22 confirms that the book is as meticulously structured as Heller claims. Indeed, the book's more puzzling features its bewildering chronology, its repetitiveness, its protagonist's belated change of heart all fit together to advance Heller's radical protest against the modern social order. What appears to be formless chaos is in fact a brilliant strategy to expose not only the worst excesses of the modern bureaucracy but also the complacent acceptance of this system on the part of everyone involved, including Heller's readers. The structural complexity of Catch-22 thus embodies Heller's meaning more thoroughly than even his admirers have been willing to suggest.
Reconsideration of the structure of Catch-22 might well begin with the most obvious example of Heller's formlessness: the utterly confusing chronology. Heller presents his story in such a way that at certain points it is literally impossible to determine the order of events. By the time Yossarian enters the hospital in chapter 1, all
Robert Merrill
The critical reputation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) is a curiosity. The book is often praised, even celebrated, yet most critics are still puzzled by such basic matters as the structure of the novel. Friends and foes alike tend to agree that the novel is hilarious but also that it is repetitious and essentially formless. Norman Mailer [see excerpt above] speaks for all those who share this view when he says like yard goods, one could cut it anywhere. One could take a hundred pages from the middle of Catch-22 and not even the author could be certain they were gone. As it happens, the author is rather certain that he would notice. Heller has said that Catch-22 is not to my mind a formless novel. If anything, it was constructed almost meticulously, and with a meticulous concern to give the appearance of a formless novel. Heller's remarks may seem defensive or at least exaggerated, but a close examination of Catch-22 confirms that the book is as meticulously structured as Heller claims. Indeed, the book's more puzzling features its bewildering chronology, its repetitiveness, its protagonist's belated change of heart all fit together to advance Heller's radical protest against the modern social order. What appears to be formless chaos is in fact a brilliant strategy to expose not only the worst excesses of the modern bureaucracy but also the complacent acceptance of this system on the part of everyone involved, including Heller's readers. The structural complexity of Catch-22 thus embodies Heller's meaning more thoroughly than even his admirers have been willing to suggest.
Reconsideration of the structure of Catch-22 might well begin with the most obvious example of Heller's formlessness: the utterly confusing chronology. Heller presents his story in such a way that at certain points it is literally impossible to determine the order of events. By the time Yossarian enters the hospital in chapter 1, all