Satire in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Good as Gold
Joseph Heller who is perhaps one of the most famous writers of the 20th 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 America's respectful institutions.
To truly understand these novels you must recognize that they are satires and why they
Catch-22 is a satire on World 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 escape the war, and in order to do so he does many improper
Good as Gold is about a Jewish man named Gold. It is about Gold's experiences with the
government while being employed in the White House. It also deals in detail with Gold's
family problems and Gold's struggle to write a book 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 House and government as a whole, and in
Catch-22 it is the military and medical 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
The influence of mail clerk Wintergreen, the computer
foul-up that promotes Major Major, and the petty rivalries among officers satirizes
the communication failures and the cut-throat competition Heller saw within both
the civilian and military bureaucracies of the 1950's. Even the Civil Rights movement,
not yet widespread i...