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Catch 22 Research Paper

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Change is an integral and endemic aspect of social structures by which societies develop, progress, climax, fall, and end. With change invariably comes a loss of conventional and previously necessary values. To witness firsthand the loss of values can be a shocking experience to the traditionalist. The character of Quentin in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is one such character. He watches as traditional Southern values fall apart in a modernizing world. The theme of value loss extends into Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as well. Both Quentin in The Sound and the Fury and Yossarian in Catch-22 see a loss of value in modern society and respond to that loss of value in radically different ways. Quentin is a traditionalist. This …show more content…

Catch-22 is, like The Sound and the Fury, a novel about the loss of values. However, the difference is in why these values are lost. While values are lost in The Sound and the Fury because of a world that is generally modernizing (modernizing in all areas of life), Catch-22’s lost values are due to the modernization of weapons of war and the mechanical way in which soldiers are treated. Values in Catch-22 have changed largely because of the way that war has changed. War once required one to be face to face with one’s enemy, looking into their eyes as one stole the life from another human. However, with the advent of long range weapons, and, in Yossarian’s case, bomber planes, war has become increasingly impersonal, turning war into a simple question of …show more content…

During a conversation between Yossarian and Clevinger, Heller writes “’They're shooting at everyone,’ Clevinger answered. ‘They're trying to kill everyone’" (Heller 16). The use of the word “they’re” in this instance carries a double meaning. First, and most obviously, it could mean the Axis powers. But, because Heller likes to point out that everyone is trying to kill Yossarian, “they” may also be a more ambiguous term: the kind of term that conspiracy theorists use when they aren’t fully aware of who they are accusing. If we follow this line of reasoning, “they” most likely also refers to Yossarian’s commanding officers, who often prove that they are willing to let their entire companies die for a promotion. Which leads me to my first point: in the modern world as seen in Catch-22, humans are expendable. The value of human life has been lost, thousands upon thousands can die and it simply doesn’t matter. In fact, Heller goes on to write “that men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance” (Heller 68), proving that human life is valueless in the modern

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