Catch-22 Readers Response

Catch-22

The Reader's Response

By: John O'dea

I have chosen a reader response criticism for Catch-22, because I believe it gives me the freedom to interpret, and explore the book on the freest and most personal grounds. It gives me the opportunity to look inward and contemplate the thought provoking scenes occurrences in Catch-22 on my own terms, and then allows me to relate these findings to fellow peers and readers.

A reader response criticism complies with my beliefs of Literature, in that everyone who reads a book comes from a figuratively different place than any other reader. Since everyone is a unique individual, the impressions, and meanings of passages are to be interpreted by these readers in their own unique and individual way.

Therefore, it is a reader response critic's belief that works of Literature do not have one specific meaning, as they are all interpreted by different people. Two people may believe that texts have different meanings, or believe different things about them.

For example, The Catcher in the Rye can lead people down two entirely different paths. For some this work represents a young mans loss of innocence, and subsequent downward spiral toward delusionistic insanity. Others however, find themselves relating to Holden Caulfield, and perhaps at that time in their life are lead to look inward and derive a new understanding of their self, which leads to a subsequent realization of many things before not understood about them. Both interpretations, based on reader response are correct, yet those of the first order are lead to believe Holden is an unreliable narrator, whilst the latter see a truth in his words that resounds within themselves. All because these two people have had different life experiences and are two different unique people.

Reader response criticism is applicable to all works of Literature. Catch-22 uses various different symbols and allusions to form its central theme that can all be interpreted in different ways. Although my response to the work has stimulated the usually accepted theme of this work that war is chaos, I will strive to illustrate and prove the reasons, which have led me to believe this. What I will cite, and my interpretations of it will be unique to who I am, and my thoughts gathered from past experiences and beliefs, though they may be a common derivation of that text because of the common experiences which man shares through cultural, religious, or social values.

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is one of the great anti-war novels of our time. Also earning the distinction of being one of the first, this book was there for the tumultuous decades of the sixties, to influence people from all over America, and the world. Joseph Heller uses the Characters: and their insanity, deaths, and in places stagnation in life, as well as Plots, similar to the characters because they are the instruments which create the plot, such as Catch-22 and that circular thinking, the insensible ventures of Milo Minderbender and the syndicate, and the state of Rome in the end, to instill in readers the themes of war is chaotic inexplicable hell.

A contributing factor to the theme of war is chaos, is the insanity of the characters. Joseph Heller wrote almost every character to be nearly certifiably insane. To show the horrors of war, Joseph Heller strives to display the way in which these characters have been twisted and changed by the war into deranged men, who's different realities are incomprehensible to anyone sane around them, including the reader. They were flying through heavy flak; it was Yossarian's job to guide the pilot safely through it. Aarfy keeps crowding near Yossarian in the nose. Yossarian resorts to beating Aarfy, who doesn't grasp that they are under fire, and their lives are in danger. "Yossarian gaped at his navigator...and it occurred to him that one of them was mad. 'Jesus Christ, get the hell out of the nose (Heller p.147)." Through all of Yossarian's anger and beatings, Aarfy never stopped smiling, nor did he leave the nose.

This passage most expertly illustrates the derangement of these men from their years of war. Anyone in their right mind would realize their lives were in danger, and if not cower on the floor in the middle of the plane, and then at least understand when their comrade tells them to leave. None of these basic human instincts are found in Aarfy, because the war has robbed him of sanity, and changed him from his civilian self. He has broken under the chaos, and the hellish conditions he faces everyday. He is also desensitized to violence and death, which is especially shown in the end when he rapes and murders a maid and doesn't care.

Catch-22 also will lead to believe that war is insanity, in the way that only the insane can bear it. The sane are broken by the war and deemed insane by those whose sanity is different. When everyone around you is the opposite sanity you are, you are deemed insane, it just depends upon point of view. "That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left (Heller p.109)." Yossarian acts crazy in the book, but when you look at the big picture, you realize he is the only sane one. He fears his death in war, and cannot come to terms with war since it is so chaotic and opposite of natural cohesive events, and he is sane in a natural flowing way.

Joseph Heller also takes the clichй humanistic view of war into account in that it plainly is a waste of human life, and all the unrecognized masses of men who die in war. "No one could recall who he was or what he looked like...the men in the same plane had all been blown to bits with him...Mudd was the unknown soldier who had never had a chance, for that was the only thing anyone ever did know about unknown soldiers-they never had a chance (Heller p.107)." Mudd had been killed before he could report for duty, and his belongings were still in Yossarians tent, three months later, just as he had put them the day he arrived.

Through this, Joseph Heller illustrates how terrible waste war really is. The death of one man has become so meaningless; that the army he died for fails to even recognize it and buries it in paper work, and will not even move his belongings back home. Yossarian begins to speak of him as the dead man in Yossarian's tent, and no one can do anything about his leftover

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