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Satire in Catch-22

 

            Satire is defined as "prose or verse that employs wit in the form of irony, innuendo, or outright derision to expose human wickedness and folly." Satire abounds in many forms and situations in Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. He satirizes the human condition in war and capitalism, but Heller's most poignant use of satire comes in his satirization of the inefficiency and absolute power of bureaucracy. .
             ""That's a very serious crime you've committed there chaplain", said the major. "What crime?" "We don't know yet""(Heller 391). The bureaucracy, those in charge, is interrogating him for something - what it is they don't know. Heller uses this incident to demonstrate the downright absurdity of these military leaders. How can someone be interrogated for a crime that, not only they haven't committed, but also one the interrogators don't even know happened? It isn't feasible. As the interrogation progresses so does the madness, ""We asked you to write your name in your own handwriting and you didn't do it." "But of course I did. In whose handwriting did I write if not my own?" "In somebody else's""(Heller 392). The interrogators just watched the chaplain write his name on a piece of paper, yet they will not believe that he wrote the name in his own handwriting, and they don't even know who's it is he wrote in if it wasn't his own. Heller also demonstrates in this scene the absurd amount of power bureaucracy has by showing how the chaplain can be arrested and interrogated for something he hasn't done. Our rights protect us from things like that, yet the military leaders can do whatever they feel. .
             One of the most outstanding instances of the bureaucracy's inability to reason is the mission on which the men must destroy a village in order to create a roadblock. The destruction of the town will stop German reinforcements from reaching the front. However, the insignificance of the mission is admitted by Colonel Cathcart himself, "They"ll be bombing a tiny undefended village.


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