Introdtion

Introduction Joseph Heller is one of the most outstanding American novelists and the representative of the black humor. His first and best known novel --- catch-22 published in 1961 was recognized as one of the most important books in America since the World War Two. And the “catch-22” has entered the American vocabulary to express the frustration of encountering absurd obstacles. Nowadays, an increasing number of scholars write books and essays to expound different aspects of the novel. Through detailed search and analysis, it was found that at present there are at least 130 academic papers about Catch-22 on the Chinese Doctor and Master’s Database. Among all these papers, 48 papers focus on its theme and the author and 66 papers are concerned with its writing skills. Some others mainly study on the absurdity as well as other things related with Catch-22. Undoubtedly no matter what subjects the scholars study, theme, writing skill or others, it is inevitable for them to touch on the literature gene of this novel—black humor. This paper does some analysis on the relationship between black humor and Catch-22. From the perspective of black humor, this paper is trying to make a detailed analysis on its main character, structure and style aims to comprehensively display the deduction of black humor in Catch-22 and let the readers have a better understanding of this novel.

PartⅠGeneral Explanation of the Black Humor 1.1 Definition of black humor Black humor was defined as “using the form of comedy to express the content of tragedy”. The so-called “black” refers to the terrible, funny objective reality; and “humor” refers to the free will of the individual character of this reality to taunt attitude. Black humor is a pain and laughter, absurd fact and calm disproportionate response, cruel and tender feelings.[1] Black humor is based in the thinking of pessimism.When meeting

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