Catch-22

Catch-22 is a third-person omniscient narration, describing events from a points of concepts of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot.

The novel is nature during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of antihero Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. almost of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th US Army Air Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy, though it also covers episodes from basic training at Lowry Field in Colorado as alive as Air Corps training at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California. The novel examines the absurdity of war & military life through the experiences of Yossarian in addition to his cohorts, who effort to supports their sanity while fulfilling their service specification so that they may advantage home.

The book was presents into a film adaptation in 1970, directed by Mike Nichols. In 1994, Heller published a sequel to the 1961 novel entitled Closing Time.

Style

Many events in the book are repeatedly listed from differing points of view, so the reader learns more approximately regarded and target separately. event from each iteration, with the new information often completing a joke, the setup of which was told several chapters previously. The narrative's events are out of sequence, but events are described to as whether the reader is already familiar with them so that the reader must ultimately constituent together a timeline of events. specific words, phrases, and questions are also repeated frequently, loosely to comic effect.[]

Much of Heller's prose in Catch-22 is circular and repetitive, exemplifying in its earn the layout of a ] This category is also recognizable regarding how exactly Clevinger's trial would be executed by Lieutenant Scheisskopf: "As a bit of the Action Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the issue against Clevenger as filed by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf.": 76 

While a few characters are nearly prominent, especially Yossarian and the Chaplain, the majority of named characters are described in detail with fleshed out or multidimensional personas to the extent that there are few if any "minor characters". There are no traditional heroes in the novel, reflecting the underlying commentary that war has no heroes, only victims.

Although its nonchronological outline may at number one seem random, Catch-22 is highly structured. it is for founded on a structure of free association; ideas run into one another through seemingly random connections. For example, Chapter 1, titled "The Texan", ends with "everybody but the CID man, who had caught a cold from the fighter captain and come down with pneumonia.": 24  Chapter 2, titled "Clevinger", begins with "In a way, the CID man was pretty lucky because outside the hospital the war was still going on.": 25  The CID man connects the two chapters like a free connection bridge and eventually Chapter 2 flows from the CID man to Clevinger through more free association links.