János Kávássy

Society in Flashlight: Analyzing Joseph Heller's Catch-22 János Kávássy

It has been more than a four and a half decades since Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was first published. By the late summer of 1962 the first book of a previously unknown author became a hit, discussed everywhere in the media. By 1970 the title itself entered the English vernacular on its own right, meaning: "a paradox in law, regulation, or practice that makes one a victim of its provisions no matter what one does". The book is a kind of cross-genre piece of work, and was called a novel, a satire, a war novel or/and a protesting war novel, and even was described as a fable. Form, however, does not relate directly to meaning - so when discussing Catch-22 we should always focus on the meaning of the book. Beside the setting - the Italian air war of World War II, the methods - the trials, hearings and loyalty oaths of the McCarthy era, and the intentions - the anti-war feeling and escapism of the Sixties, Catch-22 is still basically about MAN as a moral being. Faced with a disastrous world and in conflict with a callous society, Heller's hero Yossarian evolves as a kind of moral standard to which we can measure ourselves, and the world we are living in.