Fragmentation in "Catch-22"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how fragmentation permeates every aspect of Joseph Heller's novel "Catch-22". linguistically, thematically and structurally, allowing him to create a wide-ranging satire that never loses sight of its central existentialist focus, Yossarian's powerful desire to survive at all costs. It looks at how Heller employs a variety of techniques to achieve the apparent incoherence of the narrative, fulfilling his satirical and comic aims and how these include a multitude of characters, the distorted and looping sense of time and the curiously disjoined language. It demonstrates how the multiple plot strands allow Heller to attack a variety of institutions from different angles, how the satire is polyform and how these aspects together create a sense of insanity, reflective of the madness on Pianosa and the horrific madness of the war itself.

From the Paper:

"Yossarian's desire to live provides the central thrust, but there are themes other than death which intertwine and recur throughout the book; primarily Milo's enterprise and the continual raising of the number of required missions. These themselves are unrelated, adding to the sense of a disjointed whole. This use of fragmentation gives Heller a means to attack two of his main targets; Milo's ridiculous commerce satirises the western capitalist belief structure, and the missions issue satirises the blind obedience the soldiers, for the most part, show to the military hierarchy."

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