第二十二条军规初稿4

题目：解析《第二十二条军规》中的黑色幽默

本科生毕业论文 作者姓名： 爱的稀薄空气气 指导教师： xxxx 所在学院： 外院 专业（系） 英语 完成日期： 2013年4月24日

Abstract

Catch-22 is one of the typical representative books of black humor. Joseph Heller, the author of this novel successfully creates the anti-hero image，Yossarian. Meanwhile，the novel adopts anti-novel structure .The whole novel seems disorder and absurd，but actually，it agrees with the theme of the novel. In the novel，the author exposes the hypocrisy of the reality world and the chaos of people‟s spiritual condition，and attacks the ugliness of bureaucracy. Many words, phrases, and dialogues in this novel are disorder, repeating, dubious and even paradoxical，but in an absurd and chaotic environment，these expressions are the wonderful deduction of black humor. The thesis will focus on the novel‟s characterization，theme，arrangement and language features to analysis the black humor in Catch-22.

In a word，Catch-22 is one of the best on black humor. The thesis will give an expression to black humor in Catch-22. Thus the readers can have a further understanding of black humor.

Key words：black humor Catch-22 absurd hypocrisy chaos

摘 要

《二十二条军规》是黑色幽默文学的代表作之一。《二十二条军规》的作者约瑟夫·海勒成功塑造了约塞连这一反英雄形象，同时，书中采用了反小说结构，整篇小说看似荒诞凌乱，实则正和作者想要表达的荒诞不经的主题相吻合。作者通过这部小说揭露了美国现实社会的虚伪和人们精神状态的混沌，抨击了官僚体制的丑陋行径。小说中的许多词、短语、对话都是无序的、重复的、模棱两可的甚至是自相矛盾的，但处在混乱的，荒诞的环境中则成了对黑色幽默的完美演绎。这篇论文主要通过详细探讨第二十二条军规在塑造人物、表现主旨、安排结构以及语言特色等方面来分析黑色幽默的完美展现。

总之，《第二十二条军规》是黑色幽默最重要的著作之一，这篇论文旨在分析黑色幽默在第二十二条军规中的体现，从而使读者对黑色幽默有进一步的了解。

关键词：黑色幽默 第二十二条军规 荒诞 虚伪 混沌

Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………1 ChapterⅠ General Explanation of Black humor……………………4

A The Origin of Black Humor …………………………………..4

B The Artistic Features of Black humor…………………………6 Chapter Ⅱ General Explanation of Catch-22………………………10

A The main idea…………………………………………………10

B The Characters………………………………………………..10

C The language Features………………………………………...13 Chapter Ⅲ Black Humor in Catch-22……………………………….17

A The Disorder Structure………………………………………...17

B The Theme…………………………………………………….18 Conclusion…………………………………………………………21 Notes……………………………………………………………….22 Bibliography……………………………………………………………23

Introduction

Joseph Heller was born in Coney Island in Brooklyn，New York on May 1,1923.He is the son of poor Jewish parents from Russia. He died of a heart attack at the age of 76 at his home in East Hampton，on Long Island，in December 1999. He joined army after the Second World War had begun and became a bomber. He once fought in Italy. These experiences provided rich materials and inspiration for his black humor works.

Catch-22 is the representative work of Joseph Heller，and also the fundamental work of black humor. It is regarded as the best novel in the 1960s，and has been a compulsory classic work of American arts students. As early as 1970, the word Catch-22 has entered into Webster‟s New World Dictionary of the American Life to refer to “a paradox in regulation, practice or law that makes one a victim of its provisions whatever one does”. And black humor as a new literature trend has become poplar since 1960s.Catch-22 is a representative novel of black humor，so research on this novel can be helpful to explain what is black humor.

Since its publication in 1961, the critics cannot reach an agreement to appreciate it. The seemingly loose and complex chaotic structure of the novel is the main arguments and someone often regard it as one without a real plot. There are two reasons: Firstly, the narration of this novel does not follow the time sequence of traditional novels. It is filled with flashbacks from time to time. Secondly, chapters and sections are not so coherent. Among the different chapters of the novel, there are no clear links. Thirty-seven out of the total forty-two chapters are named after the characters‟ names or their positions, which is different from the traditional novels. It can be seen from the above aspects, the novel Catch-22 is interwoven by a few scattered scenes.

Because of that, Catch-22 cannot be labeled as a real book to Whitney Balliett. In his opinion, the novel seems to have been shouted into paper. Even early admirers of this novel are confused by its apparent formlessness. The traditional techniques utilized by conventional novelists are abandoned in writing this novel. As a matter of

fact, both plot and structure are carefully arranged not only to strengthen the novel‟s absurd theme but also to bring about its own feature of absurdity. “Because Catch-22 is an original, there‟s no book like it anyone has read”, The American writer Norman Mailer says so. Yet it‟s maddening. It reminds one of a Jackson Pollock Painting of ten feet high, and twenty feet long. Just like yard goods，it can be cut at anywhere. If one took out a hundred pages from the middle of Catch-22, even the author could not realize they were gone. Therefore, Leon Selzer believes that readers will think the theme and technique as absurd without hesitation in Joseph Heller‟s classic novel Catch-22. Besides the themes and techniques, another center of critics‟ discussion is the discontinuous discourse of the novel. Cary W. Davis once claims that the most vital implications of the novel for our literature lie in the way how Heller‟s demythologizing of discourse relates to Yossarian‟s request for survival and to the question of whether it is possible to discover a meaningful, and “continuous” discourse. There are also some other voices. Beneath the seemingly disorder structure and theme of Catch-22, we can see the author‟s genuine intention. Brustein interprets Catch-22 as a revelation of the “malevolent, mechanical, incompetent world” and an attack of the “humbug, hypocrisy, cruelty and sheer stupidity of our mass society”. Brustein reviews this novel as “an explosive, bitter, subversive, and brilliant book”. According to Mitchell，“Catch-22 is a book of enormous richness and art, of deep thought and brilliant writing, a surrealist Iliad, with a lunatic high command instead of gods, a coward for hero.” Mailer announces that “Catch-22 is the debut of a writer with merry gifts”. The reason for them to think so is that the inherent order is often glossed over by the seemingly disorder. Clinton S.Burhans, Jr.‟s careful study of Catch-22 concludes that “Despite the constant episodic zigzags which comprise Catch-22‟s narrative surface, the novel is built on a central conflict，two sub-plots and a host of motifs.” From the above comments on Catch-22, we can conclude that it‟s just Heller‟s unusual writing skills that help establish the classical situation of Catch-22 in literature. Walsh also remarks that the novel‟s structure, themes and writing techniques differ from those war novels in the traditional sense. Although a black humorist, Joseph Heller is distinct from other humorists because his novel is not

a simple demonstration of the absurd, but also a protest against the absurd, which makes him differ from other absurdist in the 60s. He regards absurdity as a by-product of modern political system of bureaucracy.

In this thesis，the present researcher will analysis black humor in Catch-22. The organization is like this: the first part is a general introduction of black humor，the second part is a review of Catch-22，the last part is explanation of black humor in Catch-22，.so after reading the thesis，you will be impressed by the author‟s writing techniques and the novel‟s absurd theme.

Chapter Ⅰ General Explanation of Black Humor

Black humor has become a new literature trend. In short, black humor is laugh with tears, that is, you realize something miserable after you laugh. This is the common means we use to self-mock in our modern society. In the following, the origin and artic features of black humor are introduced.

A The Origin of Black Humor

Black humor is a product of the 20th century. It becomes prevalent in the United States in the 1960s, and develops as a literary genre in the 1970s and 1980s in western countries. The term “black humor” is coined by the French surrealist writer Andre Breton in 1939 in his book Anthologie de L‟humour Noir. His definition is “It cannot be a matter of explicating humor or making it serve didactic ends‟[1] But it is not until 1965 when Bruce Jay Friedman publishes a pamphlet which contains moments of novels of 12 fiction writers that the term “black humor” becomes a terminology of a school of literature. The term “black humor” is constituted by two words, i.e. “black” and “humor”, which have intensive connotations respectively. “Black” represents the black side of society or life, for example, the absolute power of bureaucracy and the loss of spiritual faith of Americans after the Second World War, while “humor” is to laugh with tears. It is a kind of morbid and absurd humor that seeks pleasure in cruelty, which is actually a form of satire though much sharper in tongue than satire. It is “with absolutely no intension of attempting to reform foibles and vices that it castigates” and therefore it becomes “a kind of corrosive ridicule of human behavior as negative in tone and destructive in effect as to constitute satire for its own sake”.

The generation of black humor has a close relation to the unrest in American society, the loss of faith and the anxiety of human being‟s own existence, which displays the helplessness and despair of a generation who have to resort to satire and humor to seek a moment of spiritual relief in face of a society full of corruption and injustice. With existentialism as the ideological basis, the absurd essence of the world

as the starting point, black humor highlights the application of exaggeration means to describe the real world of the residual. It aggravates the absurdity by exaggerating the cruelty and chaos of the real world. Existentialist philosophy and literature reach their climax in 1940s and 1959s in France, and soon they spread to Europe and America, and hence their influence on black humor is self-evident. First of all, most of the existentialist works are written during and after the Second World War, reflecting human living and their psychological characteristics. Although the majority of black humor novels come from the 60s, the contents remain the great influence of the social life in the 50s and 60s upon human beings, with their focus on describing the psychological and physiological responses over the pressure of survival. The close connection between black humor and essentialism cannot be ignored especially when the sudden emergence of black humor novels occupies almost the ideological field of the United States and the important aspects of ideology. A series of social crises intensify the crisis of survival which stimulates widespread reflection of human beings. Thus interests are aroused in such subjects as death, absurdity and existence. The similarity of black humor and existentialism lies in that they both behold the view of confronting the absurd universe without intrinsic values. They both attach great importance to the survival environment of human beings and the detailed description of their feelings and experiences. However, essentialists as Sartre and Camus remain confident in existence and give order and meaning to the absurd, chaotic and absurd universe. From the mutual assistance and loyalty of the characters in their works, we can see that essentialists still believe in the struggle of the subjects which will lead to victory. Sartre convinces that existentialism is a humanitarian in a sense. By contrast, the blackness of the works of black humor haunts through the whole book although there is humor and struggle, and the reason is that this kind of humor is with tears and that the struggle of the characters is weak, and thus set the dark or even despair tone of the narration. It is the very deviation of black humor fictions from essentialist literature in revealing the spiritual crisis in modern western society that reflects the confusion of modern people towards life. Black humor is a literary approach that expresses tragic contents in the form of comedy. Blackness refers to the terrible but

funny objective reality while humor implies the mocking attitude of an individual who has his own will and purpose towards such reality. Humor is shrouded in blackness and thus becomes a desperate sense of humor. Western critics call it gallows humor.

B The Artistic Features of Black Humor

Black humor is a kind of dumbfounding humor, a chaos where tragic content and comedic form are interwoven, showing the absurdity of the world, the alienation of the community, the frustration after the wreckage of rational principles, and individuals‟ self-struggling in vain. People will issue cynical laughter when confronting all this, pulling themselves away from the cruel reality by adopting humorous attitudes towards life to safeguard the battered human dignity. This is the so-called “black humor.”

The first artistic feature of black humor is the combination of humor and blackness. Traditional humor gives rise to a sense of pleasure mainly by making fun of the flaws or weaknesses in human beings. According to Zhu Guangqian, this kind of humor adopts a joyful attitude towards the shades of life or human beings who are regarded as interesting images. The traditional sense of humor usually places a person a higher position mocking at other human beings or things, overlooking the objects being mocked. Thus creates a sense of superiority and satisfaction. Being able to make people laugh, black humor can never bring joy to them because pain and misery are often hidden behind. Sadness, fear and laughter can be aroused at the same time. Thus blackness and humor are the essential elements of black humor, the integration and penetration of which constitute the essence of black humor. In black humor novels, blackness and humor are often alternated rapidly. However, the ratio of fear and humor are not always equivalent. Humor and fear develop along two crossed diagonals. When these two lines cross, effects of fear and humor can be achieved. However, when the two lines are removed from each other, readers will feel either fear or ridiculous, but the corresponding feeling will fade out. Humor and fear co-exist in the works of black humor. And when these two elements are interwoven

with each other, the quantity of one element is inversely proportional to that of the other which is supposed to change accordingly. That is to say, when the novel becomes more humorous, the feeling of fear will become weaker and vice verse. However, when humor and fear are balanced, it will be difficult for the reader to distinguish grief from joy and merry from sorrow. But no matter how humor and fear are integrated into one, it will arouse the readers‟ complex emotions, which mean laughter and tear in extremity. Critics call it a strong emotional confusion. By causing such feelings, the authors manage to make readers see terror in joy, comfort in despair and thus a unique reading experience can be obtained.

The second feature which characterizes black humor is the “anti-hero” type of character. The spiritual world of the character is often suffering from eccentricity and morbidity and therefore the protagonist is deherorized in his actionless approach to fight for his human dignity. The author‟s views on social issues are often expressed through the ridiculous words and deeds of the characters in the novel. From the point of view of characterization, almost every black humor novel has an “anti-hero”. Various representative figures such as soldiers in the war, scientists under modern technology, or the spies in political struggle, are often placed in a typical social environment, where their social roles are ridiculed to reveal the ugly nature of social mechanism. These protagonists are not heroes in the traditional sense, but rather their actions are on the opposite side of that of real heroes. They are heroes in another sense. They are the rebel heroes. We can take the protagonist Yossarian in Heller‟s novel Catch-22 as an example. He is not a conventional hero. He does not risk his own life to save anyone else‟s. His only goal is to preserve himself whenever possible. In order to avoid risking his life, he tries every means to escape military mission. He refuses to take military orders by faking various excuses of illness to stay in hospital and by destroying lines of communication and in the end he flees away from the army. Although his various acts cannot be identified with that of a typical hero, he has seen through the emptiness of the nature of war and the skewed value orientation of military bureaucracy, and thus he takes the only true stance of preserving himself. He is not a traditional hero, but he is a true fighter, a hero of existentialism. The

“anti-novel” narrative structure constitutes the third artistic feature of black humor novels. The complicated and confusing plot is displayed in the form of implication, contrast and symbol. The rational chronology is broken up and the skipping of narration speeds up. There is no logical relationship between plots. In most cases, the narration of reality and the collection of the past and fantasy are mixed together, and serious philosophy and gag are interwoven. Rich irony, incongruity of the syntactic rules and practices and inherent collocation, are the basic techniques employed in black humor novels. In reading those novels, we should try to see the order in disorder. The plots of black humor novels are usually chaotic and disorder. The chaotic, complex and disturbing scenes composed by scattered plots are actually a fantastic portrayal of the disordered state of society. Although disturbed, readers can enjoy the experience of constructing order from disorder in the reading process. The contents are multifarious and disorderly and the plot is loosely organized. Such novels are full of stories without beginning or end, as if the writer were talking aimlessly. Overall, the layout of black humor novels is messy and indirect, which mirrors black humorists‟ intention of using both contents and form to reveal the existence of disorder and absurdity in the world. The black humor novel itself is no longer a closed body. The novel does not develop along the traditional chronology any more, and neither does it expand in a logical train of thoughts. Instead, independent fragments and details are accumulated, the contents obviously loose, and meanings blurred, which result in an open organizational structure. The loose structure and contents of black humor novels both touch upon emptiness which is a true reflection of human beings‟ frustration and despair at the environment, and their hopelessness about the ultimate meaning of life. Therefore, a lot of black humor novels begin with “searching for” but end with nothing conclusive. Black humor novels are not the ones in the traditional sense as to moralize or to educate, in contrast, the novelists seem to have seen through the nothingness and absurdity of meaning, and have given up the pursuit of reason and turned to expose and make fun of this nonsense. The loose structure and ambiguous language give the novel too much uncertainty and inclusiveness, allowing the reading of these novels breaking through the conventional interpretation. Readers cannot find

plots or contents in such novels and even their expectations will fall through. The loose structure would not make the story a complete one, only leaving reader to experience and interpret in their own way. Black humor novels juxtapose the occurrence and development of different events. Therefore, the time sequence appears chaotic. The reality of the novel has been greatly weakened accordingly, and fantasy and absurdity are enhanced as a result to highlight the artistic effect of black humor. In a word，black humor has three significant features：special style of humor；anti-hero characters; anti-novel narration structure. All those helped to express the gist.

Chapter Ⅱ General Explanation of Catch-22

A The main idea

Near the end of the World War, a bomber named Yossarian is stationed with his Air Force squadron on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Yossarian, as a badly frightened person, tries his frantic efforts to avoid being killed in the midst of chaos and absurdity regardless of all kinds of authority and creed. On this island, the sole purpose of his life is to escape combat missions. So he fakes illnesses time and time again to stay in hospital as he finds that this is the best place to hide. But he has to carry out his missions because of catch-22, which is actually a paradox. Only those who are mad cannot fly, but he has to apply for that. However, once he does that he is not mad and has to fly again. Thus the number of combat missions is increased again and again. In the novel, a lot of unreasonable things happen, for instance, Yossarian receives the medal naked just because he does not want to wear the uniform; a soldier cuts down his comrade in the middle with a plane and then commits suicide; Orr destroys the fighter time and time again to train his ability to escape and finally he makes it and lands on Switzerland; Milo makes cotton candy out of cotton and sells them to his fellows, and he fulfills the obligation on a contract to blow up his own Air Force Base, etc. This sense of humor will surely make people tremble with fear. By these ridiculous plots, “Catch-22” wants to tell people that there are many rules as absurd as catch-22 and people cannot see their future in such a world. Although the background is the Second World War, the novel reflects the ideological trend of value declination after the WWII. All things like death, war, emotion, and belief become meaningless. The only thing that people care is to live their lives on.

B The Characters

Catch-22 has a loose structure，and does not have a main clue. There are many

characters but none of them is written subtlely. The plot is disorder and repetitive，the traditional time sequence is replaced by psychological time. Absurdity pervaded the novel，revealing an unreasonable world and crazy people living in it. From the narrative aspect，the author characterized bureaucratic authority and common people to reflect the theme.

Everything in the novel is absurd，crazy and unreasonable. In the governmental system of the Twenty-seventh air force，General Peckem and General Dreedle‟s main concern is to intrigue against each other for more power and higher position. The commander Colonel Cathcart increases flying missions regardless of the soldiers‟ lives for his own purpose to become a General. To fawn on his superior, he send soldiers to bomb a tiny undefended village to make a neat aerial photography, he announces the alive Doc Daneeka dead, and Colonel Korn claims that once Doc Daneeka appears, he will be cremated immediately because he is dead. Captain Black is a lackey of the bureaucracy, his daily work was to collect tricks in order to trap somebody the authority dislike. He even started a Glorious Loyalty Oath, which is meaningless, he himself refers to it like this:

“The important thing is to keep them pledging,” he explained to his cohorts. “It does not matter whether they mean it or not. That‟s why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what „pledge‟ and „allegiance‟ mean”[2]

It does not mean anything, but the soldiers have to sign it, otherwise he will be punished, through this we can see the emptiness of people‟s mind.

Another person named Milo was something in the money-oriented society. He becomes a mess officer from a humble pilot. He looks upright and honest, but actually he is good at making money. In the name of mess purchase, he plays the market and establishes multinational corporations. He makes use of most planes to smuggle, even hires German planes to transport, and what is the worst, he contracts defending bridge

of the enemy. Later, he becomes the Mayors of many European cities and the vice-governor of Malta as an international famous person. Milo is a economic genius, he could buy eggs in Malta for seven cents apiece and sell them at a profit in Pianosa for five cents. But he has no mercy, he bombs their own station to get money.

Catch-22 creates an anti-hero character, who suspects and denies all traditional value. He is lonely in the absurd world but persists in his own pursuit. the characters often laugh at what they respect，destroy what they build，deny what they affirm，protest what they receive. The main character，Yossarian，is a typical anti-hero，who possesses both positive and negative factors. He hates wars，and seeking to live on is the greatest principle in life. With the purpose，he struggled on and on. Yossarian is the real hero the author wants to praise. He is the sober in the absurd and crazy capitalist society，he is the first one to challenge catch-22. He is a typical image of anti-hero in the modern literary world

The hero Yossarian lived in this absurd strange world. He is a bomber of the Air Force. He joins the army with all the passion to save his country. But gradually he realizes the war has nothing to do with patriotism, and he is cheated by the army. The war was cruel, unreasonable and everyone is out of their mind. His enthusiastic attitude towards war changes to disgust. He does not want to get promoted or get rich, or die meaninglessly, he just wants to come back to his country alive. Seeing his companies died makes him frightened, so he has the fake illusion of being killed by people around him, in order to avoid that, he decides to escape “the world”, by means of pretending to be sick in hospital, where he plans to spend his time, but he fails. According to catch-22, only crazy people can get the permission to be grounded, which need oneself to ask for, but the catch also says the people who realize the danger are normal people, they should carry out their missions. According to the catch, pilots who have finished specified times can come back home, but it also says you should obey your superior absolutely, or you cannot go home. So when the authority increases flying missions continually, the soldiers have to obey. Finally, Yossarian realizes the catch-22 is a trap no one can escape, and he can do nothing. It is said in the novel like this:

Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.[3]

There are also lots of other characters that live in the disorder world, all those characters are created to reflect the social reality. Though it seems one can do nothing to change this absurd world, but one can survive by running away.

C The Language Features

The author breaks traditional language pattern and logic，using some humorous sentences in order to attain the effect of black humor. In the novel，Heller uses short conversations and boring language，like “that is good”、“that‟s too bad”，those boring sentences are meaningless bland communication，but on the other hand，those sentences indicate the loss of individuality in a despairing environment. Heller makes use of contradiction and meaning confusion，for example，Doc Daneeka said：“It‟s not my business to save lives”；Milo said, “I never lie, I only lie when it‟s necessary ”； General Peckem boasted：“My only fault is that I have no faults”… at first sight，those humorous sentences seem funny，but they reveal the chaos and absurd of the reality world and reflect the features of black humor.

When describing some serious horrible scenes，the author made use of joking sentences，making the humor full of bitterness and pain. In the description of deaths，Heller describes like this:

They didn‟t take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn‟t explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn‟t drown or get struck by

lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn‟t get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent.[4]

Through those sentences，you realize the shock of death，that is the magic effect of black humor. Death would be something that everyone is afraid of，however，what the author showed to the readers is relaxing， meaningless，there is no pain or groan but just a farce；after finishing reading，the readers feel serious and repressive. in such a morbid environment，life cannot be respected，individuality has no alternative but to laugh at each other and live on. This is also the reflect of the ordinary people‟ mind，who are unable to resist the miserable situation. Their only choice is to joke.

And the author uses lots of language games，like mass of conversations，repetition，pun，simile， paradox and so on，producing a unique black humor effect. First，the author used lots of empty comedic conversations. Some of them are simple，and the answers are surprising and funny. Others are long and exaggerated，making readers laugh. For example,

“Do you know how long a year takes when it‟s going away？” Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. “This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you‟re an old man.”

“Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Old.”

“I‟m not old.”

“You‟re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high

school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

“Well, maybe it‟s true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. “Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it‟s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”

“I do” Dunbar told him.

“Why” Clevinger asked.

“What else is there?‟[5]

Second, the author used many surprising similes, for example, when describing Doc Daneeka, it begins like this: “Doc Daneeka was unmoved. He was a sad，birdlike man with the spatulate face and scrubbed，tapering features of a well-groomed rat.”

In the thirtieth chapter, another example of describing Snowden„s wound，

“…the yawning，raw，melon-shaped hole as big as a football in the outside of his thign，the unsevered，blood-soaked muscle fibers inside pulsating weirdly likes blind things with lives of their own”[6]

These similes were different from people‟s common sense，making characters distinctive . thus producing the black humor effect.

In the unreasonable world, language is no longer a tool for expressing ideas or communicating，on the contrary，it only makes people confused.

In the novel, the author uses lots of satiric sentences to express his attitude, for example, when the author introduces General Peckem, he writes:

He was a perceptive,graceful,sophisticated man who was sensitive to everyone‟s weaknesses but his own and found everyone absurd but himself. General Peckem laid great, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. He was always augmenting things„[7]

The author uses satiric sentences to criticize the stupidity of the people and the absurd world.

Chapter Ⅲ Black Humor in Catch-22

A The Disorder Structure

The most outstanding artic form in Catch-22 is its anti-novel structure and the switch of point of view. The author seems to give difficulty to the readers on purpose。From the very beginning of the novel，he used a surprising and confusing way of narration，leading the readers to a enormous word‟s forest ，which is full of mixed scenes and various people with absurd conversations. the novel is different from the traditional narration structure which has complete plot，deliberate arrangement and time sequence, it adopts a scattered structure that agree with the content which was . It connects scattered reality to absurd plot. The book contains 42 chapters ，among which 37 are titled as names or positions. Each chapter tells a story of one character，and then the hero Yossarian connects these stories. There is no complete plot or story，and there is no careful environment description or characterization，and there is no beginning，development climax or ending. Events are made up together by narration，conversation and recall. Events are reflected from different angles by different people. Everything is realized in the characters‟consciousness. For example, Snowden‟death is before the novel begins, in the novel, the author mentioned it four times, and every time brings further information. In this way, the author catches readers‟ attention and creates suspension in the readers‟ mind. The past，the present，and the future are interlaced permeated, characters are jumped among them. Because the author think the social reality as irrational and illogical chaos，in another word，the reality is noisy，crazy and absurd，he can arrange various plot as his wishes.

And also the novel does not obey the traditional time sequence order. Every chapter can be the first, and even with 100 pages taken, it won‟t affect its motif.

But actually, beneath the seemingly disorder, chary readers may notice that there are three clues throughout the novel. The first clue is the number of required flying missions. When certain flying missions are mentioned, the author will talk about the events that happened during the time. With this number as a reference,

readers can come to understand whether the plot is pushed backward or forward. The second clue is the repeated scenes. The process of the story is implied by the repetitive appearance of several scenes that appear in different chapters. The third clue is the three major bombing missions. Heller also admits that the whole story builds on three main military missions ---- Ferrarra, Bologna, and Avignon. So this novel is not absolutely disorder, the seemingly disorder structure is only a means to serve the absurd theme.

B The Theme

Joseph Heller is universally accepted as one of the representative black humor writers.Catch-22 is his master piece. This novel advocates the absurd of the existence and freedom of choice. The world，society，and life are absurd and unknowable，making life an endless nightmare. it produces a new school of literature，leading the development of American literature after the Second World War.

Catch-22 doesn‟t have a complete plot, but through a pile of queer, various, unreasonable events and scenes, it emerges a crazy world, an absurd reality and a group of disparate soldiers. The novel depicts the military life on the Pianosa. In this world, everything is unreasonable and desperate. ridiculous things happen one after one: combat missions can be increased at random ;A live man is announced death；On the contrary, a dead man is still alive on the authoritative name list…The author tries to expose the absurdity of the world.

Catch-22 exposed under the government of bureaucratic military system, innocent people is controlled and engulfed by alien power; traditional standards are regarded as heresy. The whole society confused right and wrong, even life and death was confused pathetically. Most people lost their human dignity and life‟s direction. Morality is one of the social ideologies, and the criterion of people‟s behavior. In the novel, some people have overturned the traditional moral standard, which they cannot be judged by.

The world in which the catch-22 depicted is absurd and chaotic, but the impression it leaves to the reader is so true. The characters are so stupid while true to life. Its connotation is afforded for thought. The author described a miserable and perplexed absurd world, exposing “organic chaos” and “systematic crazy”, his purpose is to attack terrible social reality.

First，the novel exposed the cruelty，mercilessness and unreasonable of war. In the novel，we can see panic，suffering，sadness and fear caused by the war. All sorts of characters，from the general to the soldiers，from the priests to the doctors，everyone is suffering a lot from it，physically or psychologically. In the end of the novel, the author writes directly like this:

What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane„ How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitor„[8]

Second，the novel exposed the hypocritical，cruel and absurd bureaucracy. What Catch-22 expressed is beyond war, it satires the collusion of American‟s industry, military and administrative authority，and also attacked the inhumanity and corruption of bureaucracy，revealing the absurd phenomenon of the reality world. In the novel, Colonel Cathcart increased flying missions regardless of the soldiers‟ lives; General Dreedle thinks his own fault is he has no faults; Milo wants to give the soldiers cotton sugar that he cannot be sold. The bureaucracy system is nothing but “systematic crazy

and organized chaos”. In the system ,the whole society is filled with hypocritical，ugly，corrupt and unreasonable phenomenon. Havermeyer does not take evasive action and often dumdummed the bullets with a hunting knife before he fired them at the field mice in his tent every night. People‟s spiritual world is collapsed and produced serious crisis of belief.

At last, the novel exposed the world„s absurdity sadness and ridiculousness. The author‟ key point is not just the war, he wanted to show the American society via the extreme form，and expose its ugly phenomenon，in order to express the confusion of human beings，among which catch-22 is a typical one. The hero Yossarian keeps reasonable，trying to survive in the army，but he realizes he must get rid of endless bomb missions，which need a certification of mind-absence. The catch-22 exposes the nothingness of modern civilization，and the distortion caused by social civilization. The death threatened human is everywhere，the whole world is absurd and numb. Doc Daneeka knows that the catch-22 is a catch, but he can do nothing to help the soldiers, so he obeys it. Many stupid soldiers lose their lives because of catch-22.

Conclusion

Catch-22 is a serious satiric black humor novel，Heller was once through the Second World War，which gives life basis to his work，so he can put himself in the reality and reflect what the war brought to people，which has some practical significance.

In the past few years，Catch-22 is universally accepted as “an epic of 1960s”and also “model of describing crazy world”，someone even said “it is the most important work written by American writers since WWⅡ” and “the first novel in 1960s that representing new American literature direction”. It is a representative work of black humor novels‟ realism. Heller used anti-novel narration structure boldly，forming disorder yet changeable plot. The cool humorous language increases the effect of black humor. The author describes the miserable sights in a humorous tone while funny things in a serious way，thus causing contrasts，which make the whole book a big joke，however，behind the joke hides the huge sadness------the sadness of system; the sadness of society; the sadness of existence，making the readers hear the desperate laughter in the absurd world，and also thinking about the society the live in.

The novel chose the Second World War as background，but what it reflects is the social life in the 1960s，just as Heller said，he was not interested in war itself，but describing the difficult situation of the people during that time and the distortion caused by the bureaucracy exposed the social reality of that time. The description of chaos and absurdity in Catch-22 exposes the essence of real world，and expresses pessimistic attitude towards the society，becoming the strongest voice of black humor. Because of the success of Catch-22，nowadays，the word catch-22 is beyond its meaning in the novel, it has come into ordinary people‟ s life. Black humor as a literature ideological trend, questioned the people‟s living conditions, and has become a rich spiritual treasure.

Notes

[1] Breton,Andre. Anthologie de L‟humour Noir,(California: University of California Press,1939)13.

[2] Heller, Joseph. Catch-22.(Internet:Simon & Schuster,1994)62.

[3]Ibid.224

[4]Ibid.91

[5]Ibid.20

[6]Ibid.183

[7]Ibid.176

[8]Ibid.266

Bibliography

Burhans, Jr., Clinton S. “Spindrift and the Sean: Structural Patterns and Unifying Elements in Catch 22.” Critical Essays on Joseph Heller, Ed. James Nagel. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1984.

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Itahaca: Cormell UP, 1978.

Genette, Gerard, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980.

Harris, Charles B. Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd. New Haven: Conn. College&UP, 1971.

Joseph Heller. Catch-22 [M].New York: Dell Publishing Co.Inc, 1961 (in Chinese)