Catch 22 - Independent Reading Response

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Text 2: Title: Catch 22 Author: Joseph Heller Text type: Written (extended) The novel Catch 22 written by Joseph Heller is a story not only about the life of Bombardier Captain John Yossarian and his endeavors to not be killed. But a satire on the inadequacies of bureaucracy, sanity and insanity, the amorality of corporations and most interestingly; the circular, self-contradicting, paradoxical, oxymoronic yet inherently beautiful logic that is Catch 22. Through the third person omniscient perspective, Heller cleverly weaves the story, in non-chronological order. In order to establish all the characters and cleverly intertwines the chapters with free association. For example the first chapter ends with everyone in the hospital ward leaving due to the incredibly obnoxious good natured Texan, except the CID man who had come down with Pneumonia. The second chapter beings "In a way the CID man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on." Heller uses satire to tackle another of the major themes of Catch 22 which is that of greed, and the amorality of corporations. Figure headed by Milo Minderbinder, as mess officer with a masterful talent for entrepreneurship who he lacks any sort of moral compass or conscience, and being naturally human cares almost exclusively for his own interests. He is brilliant in turning his role as mess officer into a huge syndicate which takes control of the black market and through various monetary tricks and contortions flourishes into M & M Enterprises (Two M’s so that people don’t realize it is in fact a one man operation) . However his amorality and view of the world as nothing but contracts where he can make a cut, brings him into questionable moral territory. For when M & M Enterprises is on the verge of collapse due to unwise investment into the whole Egyptian cotton crop (who knew the
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