A Comparison of Satire in Catch-22 and Good as Gold :: comparison compare contrast essays

Satire in Catch-22 and Good as Gold Joseph Heller who is perhaps one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century writes on some emotional issues such as war. He does not deal with these issues in the normal fashion instead he criticizes them and the institutions that help carry these things out. Heller in fact goes beyond criticizing he satirizes. Throughout his two major novels Catch-22 and Good as Gold he satirizes almost all of Americas respectful institutions. Catch-22 is a satire on hu art objects War II. This novel takes place on the small island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean sea late in the war when Germany is no longer a threat. It is the struggle of one man, Yossarian, to survive the war. Throughout this novel Yossarian is trying to run for the war, and in order to do so he does many awry(p) things. Good as Gold is about a Jewish man named Gold. It is about Golds experiences with the government while being employed in the egg white House. It similarly dea ls in detail with Golds family problems and Golds struggle to write a phonograph record on the contemporary Jewish society. Throughout these two novels, Catch-22 and Good as Gold, Heller criticizes many institutions. In Good as Gold it is the white-hot House and government as a whole, and in Catch-22 it is the military and medical examination institutions. In Catch-22 the military is heavily satirized. Heller does this by criticizing it. Karl agrees with this statement by offering an example of the satire of both the military and civil institutions in Catch-22 The influence of mail clerk Wintergreen, the computer foul-up that promotes Major Major, and the lower-ranking rivalries among officers satirizes the communication failures and the cut-throat competition Heller saw within both the civilian and military bureaucracies of the 1950s. Even the Civil Rights movement, not yet widespread in the 1950s, is satirized in Colonel Cathcart attitudes toward enlisted men. (23) Karl summarizes the satirazation of the military with this The enemy in Hellers book is not scarcely the chaos of war, but also the deadly in tender bureaucracy of the military-economic fundamental law which clams to be a stay against chaos while it threatens human life more insidiously then battle itself. Heller also questions the need for the death and carnage throughout the novel asking if it is real necessary.