Joseph Heller: The American Historical Author

 

 

Cynthia Pakro & Magy Eskander

 

Catch-22

Closing Time

 

 

Table of Contents

i) Biography

ii) Overview of Novels

iii) Identification of Style Elements

iv) Freudian Analysis

 

v) Deconstructional Analysis

vi) Reader-Response Analysis

vii) Historical Analysis

viii) Biographical Analysis

ix) Quiz

x) Works Cited

xi) Annotated Bibliography

xii) Relevant Links

 

 

Biography

 

          Joseph Heller was born on May 1, 1923 in Brooklyn, New York to first generation Russian-Jewish immigrants (Joseph Heller Biography 1). His father was a bakery truck driver, and his mother stayed home to take care of him. When Heller was only 5 years old, his father had surgery and during the process certain complications led to his death. Many believe that Heller’s dark humor was due to growing up near the amusement park at Coney Island. Later on in his career, Heller claimed that The Iliad by Homer was a great influence when he was a child (Joseph Heller Biography 2).

            In 1941, Heller graduated from high school and briefly worked in an insurance office, and in 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps after America entered World War II. Heller flew sixty combat missions as a fighter pilot at the island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea, and later earned an Air Medal and a Presidential Unit Citation. Many believe that Heller’s war years in the Mediterranean had a major impact on the creation of Catch-22 (Joseph Heller Biography 3). Heller left the military in 1945, and married Shirley Held and began his college education towards becoming an English professor. After receiving a master’s degree, he attended Oxford University as a Fulbright Scholar for a year before becoming an English instructor at Pennsylvania State University (Joseph Heller Biography 4).

 

            In 1961 Heller wrote his first novel, Catch-22 which presented a comic vision of modern society with serious moral connections. Throughout Heller’s writing a consistent theme “is the conflict that occurs when individuals interact with such powerful institutions as corporations, the military, and the government” (Joseph Heller Biography 8). Closing Time (1994) is the sequel of Heller’s Catch-22, but it did not have the same impact as the first novel. Heller wrote multiple other novels but none had the same repercussion as Catch-22. Heller’s novel Something Happened (1974) received more criticism of superiority and was deemed more sophisticated than Catch-22 (Joseph Heller Biography 9).

 

            During the early 1980s, Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a fatal nerve disease, which left him paralyzed. Later on he overcame the disease and was able to write his first nonfiction book, No Laughing Matter (Joseph Heller Biography 11). On December 12, 1999, Heller died of a heart attack in East Hampton, New York. After his death, his final work which was collection of memoirs and essays, A Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, was published (Joseph Heller Biography 12).

Overview of Novels

 

Catch-22

            The novel begins with the protagonist John Yossarian who is a bomber pilot during World War II, near the Italian Coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Yossarian and other members of the squadron were being oppressed by the military and government by being forced to complete a certain amount of missions. They are treated inhumanely by their superior officers, who constantly raise the number of missions that must be fulfilled, so that no one is ever sent home. The whole novel revolves around Yossarian and his goal of being discharged from the military. Throughout the war, Yossarian is frequently losing his friends, which causes him to become more desperate to leave the military (Spark Notes 3). Eventually, Yossarian discovers an opportunity to leave the army, on one condition; he must approve of his ranking officers’ policy, which requires every officer to fly eighty missions. In the end, Yossarian has an epiphany realizing that in order for him to be released, he risks the lives of the squadron. Ultimately, he flees to neutral Sweden, abandoning the dehumanizing of the military, rejects the rule of Catch-22 and attempts to regain his life (Spark Notes 4).

 

Closing Time

            Closing Time was the sequel to Catch-22, but it was not nearly successful as the first. Closing Time continues with Yossarian and other members from the World War II thirty to fifty years later. In this novel, Yossarian was not attempting to flee war, rather he was avoiding the natural course of life, escaping: death and old age. Closing Time is basically two stories coming together to be one novel. The first story follows Yossarian as he tries to adapt to the post-war New York. The novel also continues Yossarian’s life and how he deals with the last stages edging towards death. The second story is also about two other men, Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz, who were also soldiers during World War II.

 

Identification of Style Elements

 

• Irony – “Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he’s in his office” (Catch-22 116).

 

• Satire - “Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead. . . . The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on” (Catch-22 102).

 

• Simile – “The soldier in white was like an unrolled bandage with a hole in it or like a broken block of stone in a harbor with a crooked zinc pipe jutting out” (Catch-22 167).

 

• Symbolism – “No sound at all came from the soldier in white all the time he was there. The ragged round hole over his mouth was deep and jet black and showed no sign of lip, teeth, palate, or tongue” (Catch-22 167).

 

• Motifs – “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he would have to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed. “It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed” (Catch-22 57).

Freudian Analysis

 

No matter what the war is, no matter who the person is, no matter when it occurs, the side effects that instill within a person, whether psychologically, emotionally, or physically, will be eternal. Both of Joseph Heller’s works, Catch-22 and Closing Time, are novels are take into consideration the psychological effects of war onto a person. Catch-22 takes the reader through the journey that the main character, John Yossarian, must go through as a bomber pilot for the Allies during World War II. In Closing Time, the reader is able to see what had become of Yossarian, and how the war has affected him. Both novels display Yossarian’s characteristics and the psychological challenges he must overcome in order to stay focused and alive.

 

            From the beginning, the reader is able to tell that the death of one of Yossarian’s close friends, Snowden, has greatly impacted his life. The memories of the experience constantly come up and cause Yossarian to take a moment to reconsider life and death. The reader does not know the exact details of the event until the end. The narrator of the novel describes the gruesome event of how Yossarian had to hold his dying friend, convincing him things would be alright, when it reality they would not. Having Snowden die in Yossarian’s arms was a traumatizing event that stuck with Yossarian forever. Although the situation seems like a negative one, in reality it made Yossarian take his own situation into perspective and decides that he will try, no matter what, to survive. He begins to think that he can control death and choose when certain illness or disabilities will harm him. The reason for this rationality could be due to the fact that he was reassuring Snowden that he would not die. Yossarian thought that because Snowden was literally in his arms, he was also figuratively in his arms, and he would be able to save Snowden. But as the book progresses, and people that he is close with are dying, Yossarian realizes that death is out of his hands, just like how Snowden’s death was.

 

            Because of all his experiences involving death, Yossarian sees it as a scary event and attempts to, at all cost, to stay away from it. He convinces the doctors that he needs to stay in the hospital and sees it as some sort of sanctuary, when most people perceive it as a place of illness and eventual death at times. But as he spends more and more time in the hospital, he sees the deaths around him and grows more adapt to it. When he is back on the battle field, Yossarian sees all his close friends and fellow bombers dying off one and by one, and one can tell that it is getting to him on a more psychological level. He begins to wonder about God, and if He does exist, why would He allow humans to go through so much pain. At one point Yossarian sees death as a sort of sanctuary and freedom, but not for himself. One of his fellow bombers was irritating him, and he had concluded that by killing him off things would be better. One can see that the war has impacted Yossarian’s mind, body and soul. He can not tolerate the death that is occurring around him at first but as time goes on he is able to understand it more, yet he realizes that it is not something that he wants to deal with for himself anytime soon.

 

            Death had created such a great impact on Yossarian, that even throughout his older years he always thought about it and how it will affect him. In Catch-22 Yossarian was afraid of the war in general and dying due to it. That is why that he would try every trick possible, from having liver problems to being insane, to be sent home. He saw how death hurt not only the deceased family, but what kind of problems you would go through if you were only critically harmed. Images from the war and the thoughts of his friends’ deaths stuck with Yossarian, which caused him to flee the war to neutral Sweden. That concluded Catch-22 and Closing Time picked up a few decades later in the United States. In Closing Time Yossarian still expresses his fear of death and trying to stay away from it as much as possible, but this time he does not worry about dying due to a war but due to natural causes that the elderly faces. The side effects from the war cause him to live his life in constant fear, and be careful, no matter what he is doing, because it could lead to his death.

 

            Both Catch-22 and Closing Time are timeless novels by Joseph Heller that capture the essence of what a soldier goes through no matter whom they are, where they are from, or what they are fighting for. By following one man’s journey from World War II to his older years, one is able to tell what psychological struggles he had to go through in order to live out his life. The incident of having his closest friend die in his arms is an image that will never leave his mind and caused him the most damage. But with this scarring event he continues on, contemplating what life and death really is.

 

Deconstructional Analysis

 

Live forever or die trying. This statement is a head-scratcher, and tends to put a look of confusion on people’s faces. This ear-catching phrase tends to trigger the emotion of depression, hence immortality does not exist and death is inescapable. Besides the brain activity that the phrase establishes, it also when looked at from an analytical perspective, it screams out irony with an addition of paradox. Joseph Heller was a prominent author, who was not very famous, but was known. In 1961, Heller publishes a book by the title of Catch-22. This was the highlight of his career.

 

            This book is about a character by the name of John Yossarian who is head of his squadron in an Air Force. The whole book is a satire; it is a dependent on humor, to show the foolishness of war. Yossarian’s goal is to get himself out of the war, and the only way to be discharged from the military, is to be declared insane. Yossarian tries to plead his insanity, but only to find out the catch-22. The catch-22 was if a pilot would plead insanity, then that would prove his sanity, because no sane person would want to fly the bomber planes. In the end of the book Yossasrian is faced with another major catch-22, which is the cause of him fleeing to Sweden.

 

            In 1994, Joseph Heller tries to write another great book following Catch-22. For a while, Heller left the book Catch-22 without a sequel to show the significance of the book, thus is excludes any signs of normality. But in 1994, Heller was able to publish a sequel to Catch-22 called Closing Time. The second book was not successful as nearly the first. Closing Time basically catches up with Yossarian and others from the World War II veterans 30-50 years later. This time Yossarian was not escaping war; he was escaping the natural course of life, escaping death and old age. Both books share a few similarities such as time period endings, death at war and death of old age, and how society can not be escaped in Catch-22, while in Closing Time, death can not be escaped.

 

            When Yossarian is in the military, he tries to find a way to get himself out of the war. Throughout the book, Yossarian takes the war personally; he only sees how his life is put in danger every time he boards the plane’s nose. A main theme in this book, is the absolute power of the bureaucrats. The colonels jeopardize many young lives just for their own reputation. This war had another goal then hitting their enemies, it was taking aerial photographs, which would help the colonel’s reputation. The power that the leaders have gets to them and they use it for their own sake. In the beginning, they gave a fixed assignment, which everyone had to complete a certain number of missions. It started at twenty missions and then every couple of weeks it would go up. The rule was if anyone would reach the assigned number they would be able to go back home. However, this did not take place, the leaders and colonels kept raising the standards of missions, which lead to a result of no one would ever be able to leave, and they would be known and seen as heroes.

 

            Yossarian wanted to abandon the war in any way, shape, or form. This war was not a war, of a soldier standing up for their country, at least not Yossarian. He saw it as everyone was trying to kill him. The only solution was to escape from the war and runaway. Once when Yossarian was walking down the street without any identification material, he was arrested and put on marshal court. Yossarian’s colonel Milo Minderbinder meets with John and tries to offer him a deal that he can not resist, but the decision would definitely lower his own moral ethics. The Colonel offered him freedom and a chance to be sent home, but it was not going to be this easy, in return Captain Yossarian had to sign an agreement, saying that every young man in the squadron would have to complete 80 missions before it was put in consideration for them to depart home. Yossarian was tempted by the offer, it was what he strived for, but his decision, shows his true moral and logic. Although, that was a deal that Yossarian always wanted, but he did not want to jeopardize the lives of every young man, just for his sake. This choice took the attention off of Yossarian’s selfish way of thinking only about himself when it came to the dangerous missions that had to be committed. Yossarian made the verdict that his freedom should not be bought by the price of the soldier’s lives. After disagreeing Yossarian is put back in fighting missions, but he finally in the end of the novel runs away to Sweden and escapes from the army. In Closing Time, Yossarian is fifty years older and is living a plain and normal life, yet he is still trying to escape death, except this time it was from aging and growing old, rather than war. Both novels, explain a process that has a definite end to it, and in both books, the same thing is strived for which is eternity, but looked at from different circumstances.

 

            Who does not fear death? The fear of death is a unanimous feeling. Everyone is afraid of death and knows that it is something that is inescapable. The main relation between the two novels is the fact of how the main character worries about death. In Catch-22, Yossarian carries an attitude of how he would rather die than be killed, which is self explanatory, due to being a soldier in the war. In a way, Yossarian would rather die at home, then be killed in war. When Heller writes the second book, it catches up with Yossarian and his old age. Now Yossarian is scared of cancer, strokes, tooth decay, and many other aging factors. Yossarian fears the natural course of life, and how death awaits him pretty soon.

 

            Both books show a catch-22 in itself. In the novel Catch-22, it talks about how society is and how people are when put in a position and they use it for their own good. This novel shows how society itself can not be escaped; an individual is locked down in place by higher authorities who are unethical. In the second novel death can not be escaped in the end, it is something that has to take place, its apart of a cycle. Both books show the reality of different conditions. In the two books, the end can not be escaped, the end waits for Yossarian.

 

            Yossarian is the lead character in both novels; he faces the same types of struggles, and psychological breakdowns. Yossarian is determined to escape death in the second novel just as he is determined to escape the war and society in the first. The phrase, live forever or die trying, explains Yossarian’s own character. He might have escaped war in the first book, but during the second book death could not be escaped and growing old could not have been avoided.  

 

Reader-Response Analysis

 

• Everyone fears death in one form or another.
• People have their own personal Catch-22s in which they must sacrifice one thing to obtain another.
• At one point, everyone is lost and confused about their own personal journeys.
• Friendships are strong bonds that can control one’s state of mind.

 

Historical Analysis

 

• Both of Joseph Heller’s novels, Catch-22 and Closing Time, are presented through the eyes’ of World War II soldiers.
• The island and locations that the soldiers are at may be fictional, but the events that take place are realistic.
• The bomber pilots and soldiers of World War II were instructed to destroy towns and cities just like the characters within the novels.
• The events that took place in the books were based on true, factual events that real World War II soldiers had to go through.
• The number of missions they had to complete in the novel was what real World War II pilots had to do as well.

 

Biographical Analysis

 

• The story takes place during World War II and Heller fought during that war.
• The protagonist of the novels was a bomber pilot and so was Heller.
• Heller took his own personal experiences as a soldier and incorporated them into the novels.
• Through the novels, Heller was able to express his personal thoughts and opinions.
• Closing Time was Heller’s way of showing the effect of war and fear of death.

 

Quiz

 

1. Yossarian decides to desert the war and flee to _______________.
2. The novel, _______________ was considered more sophisticated than Catch-22.
3. Heller continued his college education to become a(n) ­­­­­­______________.
4. The novel, _______________ was greatly impacted by his war years.
5. Yossarian was a bomber pilot during World War II at __________________________.
6. Yossarian’s main goal throughout the novel is to ______________________________.
7. Yossarian’s epiphany at the end was _______________________________________.
8. Closing Time was written ____________ after Yossarian leaves the war.
9. In the sequel, Yossarian is now dealing with ________________________________.
10.  The concept of Catch-22 is considered a  _________________.
11.  The soldier in white symbolized __________________________________________.
12.  _________ was an influential person in Yossarian’s life.
13. Yossarian sees _______________ as a place of sanctuary from the war.
14. _________ is an element that carries over into the sequel.
15. In beginning, Yossarian thought that by being _______ he could leave the war.
16. A main theme in Catch-22 is _____________________________________.
17. Consistent themes that Heller uses within his novels is the conflict that occurs when individuals interact with __________________________________, ______________________ and _______________________.
18. Yossarian perceived the war as __________________________________.
19. Yossarian would rather die at ______ than be killed at ______.
20. Catch-22 shows how __________ can not be escaped.
21. _______________ are strong bonds that can control one’s state of mind.
22. Both novels are written through the eyes’ of ___________________________.
23. Closing Time was Heller’s way of showing the _______________ and ________________.
24. Heller took his ______________________________________ and incorporated them into the novels.
25. Both the protagonist of the novels and Heller were __________________.

 

Works Cited

 

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1961

 

"Joseph Heller Biography." Notable Biographies. 2007. 10 Apr 2008 <http://www.notablebiographies.com/He-Ho/Heller-Joseph.html>.

 

Spark Notes: Catch-22. 2. New York: Spark Publishing, 2007.

 

Annotated Bibliography

 

"Catch-22: Critical Essays: Heller's Use of Satire." Cliff Notes. 2008. Wiley Publishing. 11 Apr 2008 <http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Catch-22-Critical-Essays-Heller-s-Use-of-

Satire.id-176,pageNum-92.html>.

            Overview of Heller’s satire used within his novels.

 

"Catch-22: Top Ten Quotes." Novel Guide. 2008. 11 Apr 2008 <http://www.novelguide.com/Catch22/toptenquotes.html>.

            Most important quotes seen within the novel.

 

Heller, Joseph. Closing Time. 1. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994

Sequel to Catch-22.

 

"Joseph Heller." Books and Writeres. 2003. 11 Apr 2008 <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/heller.htm>.

            Brief biography on Heller and short analysis of each work.

 

Severo, Richard; Mitgang, Herbert. "Joseph Heller, Author of "Catch-22," Dies at 76." Neil Mishalov. 1999. 11 Apr 2008 <http://www.mishalov.com/Heller.html>.

            Heller’s passing and analysis of his works.

 

Relevant Links

 

SHS AP Literature Author Comparison Project

 

What is Catch-22? And why does the book matter?

 

Catch-22 (1970-film)

A brief tribute to Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22

Something Happened

 

Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man