An Existential Analysis of Catch-22 第二十二条军规赏析

An Existential Analysis of Catch-22

Contents

Acknowledgements (i)

Abstract(English) (ii)

Abstract(Chinese) (iii)

1. Introduction (1)

1.1 Catch-22 (1)

1.2 Writing Background (1)

2. The Existentialism (2)

2.1 “I think, so I a m” and “e x istence before essence” (2)

2.2 The initiative of the soldiers (3)

3. Free Choice (4)

3.1 Orr (5)

3.2 Yossarian (6)

4. The Absurdity of the World (7)

4.1 The Absolute power of the Bureaucracy (7)

4.2 The Moral Insanity (8)

4.3 The Inevitability of Death (9)

5. Conclusion (10)

Work Cited (12)

Abstract

This paper is going to talk about the existentialism in Joseph Heller’s masterpiece Catch-22. As regards to the influence of existentialism on literature, Jean Paul Sartre’s theories are the one of the great significance, which is the main concern in this thesis.

Joseph Heller (1923-1999) is one of the most representative writers of Black Humor, which forecasts the dominating of American post-modernism literature. The heart of Black Humor is the description of the absurdity of the world, which is also a doctrine of existentialism. So it is said that existentialism is one of the origins of Black Humor.

In Catch-22, there are bounds of freedom and the struggles to get off from them, which is a main theme of the book. And as regard to Sartre’s existentialism, the central thought is the freedom to choose what one wants to be or to do, which agrees with the theme of Catch-22 above I have mentioned. So in this paper I just choose Sartre’s existentialist thoughts to analyze it, despite other existentialists. Existentialism is a different point of view to look at the traditional war-novel, from which I think a deeper and more theoretical criticism of the war as well as that of the world can be obtained.

For the value of this paper, first of all, it will prove Catch-22 an existential novel. Both centered on the theme of freedom, this novel and existentialism share the same basis, so it’s natural to connect them together. Also, there is chapter four on absurdity to illustrate this point. Thirdly, I want to stress the subjectivity and advantages of existentialism. Although many people think it as superficial and spiritual, it stresses on humanism, paying attention to initiative and subjectivity, which are still hot centers of discussion till now.

Key words: Catch-22;Existentialism; Free choice; Absurdity

内容摘要

约瑟夫·海勒的代表作《二十二条军规》中渗透着存在主义的思想,这也是本论文讨论的主旨所在。在存在主义理论，特别是其对文学有影响的存在主义理论中，萨特的理论是有着重要的地位。虽然他的理论观点看法总是在不断地改进中，自由问题始终是他所重点关注的问题。萨特的哲学被称为“自由哲学”的原因，就是因为他对人类自由问题的关注和阐释。根据萨特的重要理论“存在先于本质”，人必须得先发挥主动性积极为自己思考，然后去做自由的选择，这些也是本论文中要涉及的内容。虽然萨特本体论为彻底完善，但使用它分析小说,可以从宏观上看到海勒对军队，对战争的厌恶,以及对社会的批判。

约瑟夫·海勒是黑色幽默小说的代表作家之一，而黑色幽默小说预示着美国后现代文学将在美国文坛占有重要的地位。黑色幽默理论的核心是世界的荒诞性，而这也是存在主义所坚持的信条。

本论文通过存在主义，特别是萨特的存在主义理论，尝试着从一个全新的角度去阐释《第二十二条军规》从存在主义关于自由，世界荒谬性，对人的主动性的强调，我们可以看到，小说中无处不渗透着存在主义的痕迹。在本文里我想强调存在主义的优点之一，注重人的主动性。虽然很多人认为它是迷信的精神的，但是它强调人道主义，注重人的主动性和主体性，而这些现在仍是被讨论的重点。

关键词：《第二十二条军规》；存在主义；自由；荒诞性

An Existential Analysis of Catch-22

Outline

Thesis Statement: This paper is meant to talk about the existentialism in Joseph Heller’s masterpiece Catch-22. As regards to the influence of existentialism on

literature, Jean Paul Sartre’s theories are the one of the outstanding

significance, which is the main concern in this thesis. In Catch-22, there are

bounds of freedom as well as the struggles to get off from them, which is a

main theme of the book. And for Sartre’s existentialism, the central thought

is the freedom to choose what one wants to be or to do, which agrees with

the theme of Catch-22 above I have mentioned. So here I just choose

Sartre’s existentialist thoughts to analyze it.

Ⅰ. Introduction: Catch-22 and its writing background

Ⅱ. The Existentialism

A. “I think, so I a m” and “e x istence before essence”

B. The initiative of the soldiers

Ⅲ. Free Choice

A. Orr

B. Yossarian

Ⅳ. The Absurdity of the World

A. The Absolute power of the Bureaucracy

B. The Moral Insanity

C. The Inevitability of Death

Ⅴ. Conclusion

1．结合毕业论文课题情况，根据所查阅的文献资料，每人撰写500 字左右的文献综述，阐述当前的研究现状：

Literature Review

Joseph Heller, one of the most outstanding American novelists and the representative of Black Humor, His first and best known novel Catch-22 is now widely recognized as one of the most important books written by Americans since World War II. term "Catch-22" has entered the American vocabulary to express the frustration of encountering absurd obstacles. Therefore a thorough existentialist reading of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 may give us some enlightenment and inspiration.

According to Brian Czech in her essay A potential catch-22 for a sustainable American ideology, the history of American ideology includes elements of increasing sustainability. Laissez-faire, racism, sexism, and anthropocentrism have been declining throughout the 20th century, as indicated by various social movements and institutional developments. Economic growth has proceeded concurrently and the material standard of living has generally done likewise. Proponents of an environmental Kuznets curve posit that continued economic growth and associated increases in the standard of living will have the effect of, and are required for, producing an increasingly sustainable ideology.

In the paper of From Modernism to Postmodernism , the auther Zhao Guofan says it is widely accepted that the emergence of Black Humor was under the influence of Existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy which grew out of France around World War II, with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as its representatives. The two world wars exerted great influence on Existentialism and Black Humor, both of which share a common viewpoint of the artistic demand of facing up an absurd universe without intrinsic values. Joseph Heller, as a Black Humorist, was inevitably influenced by the existentialist philosophy and presented it in his Catch-22

There was a study by Gary w . Davis, in A detailed Summary of Catch 22, he criticized that through Catch-22 Joseph Heller permeates the idea that there is no single definitive truth, that the world is the form of a continual clash of truths. Heller permeates his ideas of

毕业论文开题报告

２．本课题研究的主要内容和拟解决的问题：

主要内容：20世纪60年代称霸于西方剧坛的荒诞派戏剧以萨特的存在主义哲学为思想基拙，强调人的分离与隔膜、存在的危机与友酷、人生的无用以及世界的荒诞。本文通过分析美国现代作家海勒的“黑色幽默”经典之作《第二十二条军规》中体现的人与其生存的世界的隔离、人与宗教、人与人以及人与自然的隔离，以阐明在现代社会里人类存在的荒诞与无奈。《第二十二条军规》中通过尤索林的遭遇，反映了战争和官僚机器的疯狂、荒诞，并通过“第二十二条军规”的象征，达到一种形而上的艺术境界。主人公尤索林是一个浸透着存在主义意识的“反英雄”形象，身兼批判现实的积极因素和取消斗争的消极因素。他是荒诞与疯狂社会中的清醒者。亲眼目睹的许多事实，促使他进行痛苦的思考。他有一定的社会意识和正义感。对于疯狂的世界，他一直进行着道义的评判。尤索林信仰的丧失，理想的落空，英雄气概的消亡，都反映了西方资产阶级的日趋衰败并渐渐走向衰亡

拟解决的问题：通过对作品中主要人物尤索林的遭遇的分析，体现《第二十二条军规》中人与其生存的世界的隔离、人与宗教、人与人以及人与自然的隔离。分析后现代主义，充分论证阐明小说中体现的现代社会里人类存在的荒诞与无奈。

1. Introduction

1.1Catch-22

Before Catch-22, Joseph Heller has written several works, including many short stories, three plays and several novels. But it is after the publication of Catch-22 that Heller as a specialized writer is remembered by the world. This work is called the epic in the 1960s.By describing a apparently crazy world, he exposes the corruption of American society, where the social bureaucrats, related to capital power, brought suffering and death to the ordinary people.

The novel Catch-22 mainly tells a story about a pilot soldier named Yossarian. This story happens in World War II. Serving in the army for a long time, he gets tired of it, and wants to go back home away from the war and from the threat to be killed. After the death of his friend Snowden, Yossarian begins to try to be grounded, to be an ordinary person away from the cruel world. In order to accomplish his dream, he pretends to be insane; to be ill and even behaves in insane manners. At last, he, obeying his own authentic self, refuses to work together with the upper officials and deserts from the army. Also there are some sub-stories about other soldiers beside Yossarian, such as his co-pilot Orr, who deserts successfully at last, another one, Nately, who falls in love with a whore, etc.

1.2Writing Background

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of poor Jewish parents. His father, who was a bakery truck driver, died in 1927. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller joined the Twelfth Air Force. He was posted in Corsica, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. In 1949 Heller received his M.A. from Columbia University. He was a Fulbright scholar at Oxford in 1949-1950. Heller worked as a teacher at Pennsylvania State University (1950-1952), copywriter for the magazines Time (1952-56), Look (1956-58), and promotion manager for McCall’s. He left McC all’s in 1961 to teach fiction and dramatic writing at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. All those experiences contribute to Heller’s writing.

After WWⅡ, American government didn’t pay much attention to social reforms, and instead it lent much money to Europe and carried out commercialism, which dissatisfied the people deeply. In politics, the horror of McCarthyism swept every corner of America. Those conditions mentioned above are the writing background of Catch-22. At the very beginning of the story, Heller told that it is not just an anti-war story. Wayne Charles Miller, in his An Armed American: Its Face in Fiction, said that Pianosa, where the story Catch-22 happened, is a mirror of America, a tool that allowed Heller to criticize justice, romantic love, heroism, the military,

and capitalism. People in this background are calling for true freedom and responsibility of the government as well as themselves. So Sartre’s theories just pleased what those people needed. All those above mentioned are the background reasons why I choose existentialism to analyze Catch-22.

2. Existentialism

Existentialists tend, for example, to highlight the unique and particular in human experience; they put the individual person at the centre of their pictures of the world, and are suspicious of philosophical or psychological doctrines that obscure this existential individuality by speaking as if there were some abstract “human nature”, some set of general laws or principles, to which men are determined or required, by their common humanity, and to conform that each man is what he chooses to be or make himself to be, and he cannot escape responsibility for his character or his deeds by claiming that they are the pre-determined consequence of factors beyond his power to control resist, nor can he justify what he does in terms upon him from without.

For the relationship of existentialism with the literature, Sartre’s theories are much more powerful than the othe rs’. Sartre’s theory “Existence before essence” stresses the initiative of human being, for which it is called “the philosophy of action”. In this chapter, focusing on the Catch-22, I’ll have a discussion about soldiers’ di fferent responses to the war according to their different initiative.

2.1 “I think, so I am” and “ex istence before essence”

“Cog ito ergo sum” is the slogan of a French philosopher, Decarte, which means in English “I think before I am.”, which is almost the equation of Sarter’s “existence before essence.”Both of them tell us that we should be suspicious to everything in the world except that “I’m suspecting”or “I’m thinking”,in spite of which I have nothing. This suspicion I have proves the existence of myself as well as the initiative of the very person, I. As I have mentioned, “exi s tence before essence” m eans “we as h uman beings have no given essence or nature but must forge our own values and meanings in an inherently meaningless or absurd world of existence.”Man was not created according to a certain style or pattern. Man has no pre-existing essence, as a result of which he is what he conceives himself to be and what he makes of himself. He sets up his own ethics and creates his own human nature. Man is thrown into the world and he must accept himself and look forwards to the future.

For all the existentialists, Sartre defers from others most by his human-centered thinking. “Sartre appreciated Decarte’s ‘I t hi nk’, and thought that any truth in the world can not depart

with ‘I think before I am’, only from which we can get an ‘absolute real self-conscio usness.’”

Of course, there are differences between them. In Sartre’s opinion, “Before Decarte’s reflective cogito, i.e., ‘I think’,there should and must be the pre-reflective thought, which should be the subject of philosophy and the starting line of the phonology.”There are shortcomings in Decarte’s thinking. For example, “from the pre-reflective cogito, Decarte sets up ‘I’ as the instinctive structure of ideology, and as the subject of thinking dominating ideology”, and consequently he went into dualis m, which separates subject from object.Also in “Cogito ergo sum”, Decarte defines “I” as a real and tangible person, which in “I think before I am”,Sartre thinks that “I”is a general theoretical definition, not a real one. What’s more, Sartre pays more attention to the authenticity and creativity of individuals, i.e., he focuses on the initiative of human beings. We choose to be what we want ourselves to be, and we must think first, not behaving in bad faith.

In spite of those detailed differences, the two theories, no matter Sartre’s “Existe nce before essen ce”or its origin “I think, so I am”,both stress the initiative of people. With the aim of discussing the initiative of those pilots, let’s see how they respond differently to the paradoxical Catch-22.

2.2 The initiative of the soldiers

“The existence of reality is always surrounded and penetrated by man’s subjectivity.”For a soldier, the immediate rules from the upper officials of the army where he serves are essential and impetuous for his daily life, although here, in this squadron, the dominating rule, Catch-22, even doesn’t exist at all, while all the enlisted men following it blindly. Sartre holds that “existence before essence”, man is free to choose himself to be a certain kind of person, who at the same time has the liability for himself as well as for the others, if not, he is said to be in a “bad faith”, which is a kind of escape from the responsibility he should take. And that’s why Sartre’s theories are called “the philosophy of action”.His theory encourages people to make their own choices, and to realize their authentic self. So initiative is important in Sartre’s theories of existence, while without which you can be called in inertia, or bad faith.

For the squadron of soldiers, some of them just act themselves in relation to the orders from the military system; some begin to think about the absurdity of the rule Catch-22 and the war; while others really start to desert. In this special situation, the soldiers of the third group is those of self-consciousness, they think more about themselves, more about the war and even more about the world than others do, which is accordant with Decarte’s “Cogito e rgo sum”. The most representative figure of this group, besides Yossarian, is Orr.

Under the control of Catch-22, Yossarian and Orr are brave enough to show their initiative in seeking their “authentic self”.Compared with Yossarian and Orr, most of the soldiers are lack of initiative, i.e., living in “b ad faith”. Under the rule of Catch-22, they aren’t in authentic existence, and just as above I have mentioned, they are only puppets.

“Bad faith” is one of famous themes of existentialism. If you act in “bad faith”,you are trying to force away from the anguish of realizing that you are absolutely free, and you do not choose your being on the basis of this or that matter, but out of nothing. As said by Sartre’s theory, “bad faith” has many forms. One manifestation of it occurs in the person who lives as a role that is mere stereotype. In order to escape one’s responsibility of choosing a meaning and a value for his life, one adopts a ready-made role, which provides him with a meaning he does not have to head for himself. I will mention several soldiers as examples living in “bad f aith” in the following section.

In Sartre’s views, the war itself is a danger to people’s freedom, which erases their initiative. MacWatt, Yossarian’s pilot, enjoys driving Yossarian up the wall by flying his airplane just a few inches over Yossarian’s tent. During combat practice, once, Yossarian loses his temper with McWatt and threatens to choke him to death. McWatt becomes frightened and realizes that Yossarian is really losing it. One day, McWatt is flying just above the beach water and by chance slices Kid Sampson, one of his co-pilots, in half. Immediately after that, McWatt crashes into the side of the mountain and dies. Read from the context, McWatt is known as a fairly obedient soldier, trying to perform his missions and to be a good soldier. However, while trying to satisfy the upper officials, he is losing himself, losing his initiative, and his authentic self. Thus the only end of him is death.

According to Sartre’s theory, there are two kinds of freedom altogether. The first one is an original choice for your existence state, i.e., you choose your own way to live in the world. And the other is the freedom for you to view the world, i.e., how you think about the world or how you discover the world of in-itself. In the first chapter, the initiative of the soldiers covers both of the two parts of freedom. In fact, Sartre put more pressure on the second part of freedom. And in ne xt chapter, we will focus on the soldiers’ freedom to make choices of their life, and I will show you how they choose their way of life in the world.

3. Free Choice

Man is condemned to be free in the world, and he is responsible for himself and the world. As much as Satire is concerned, it is freedom that is the foundation of all essences (Sartre 438). But such freedom is not the freedom of doing whatever one likes, but “the freedom of choosing”

(Sartre 481). To all existentialists, man is always attempt to use his complete freedom to choose a certain line of action above another when he is appealing his possibilities to self-hood. Responsibility is closely connected with this freedom. Once man has made his choice, he is ought to be responsible for it. Existentialists as Kierkegaard and Sartre also insist the freedom be equated with existence. Man is free to create his own essence and his own values，but freedom cannot be grasped by the thought and can be known just when it is exercise. In the Catch-22-haunted absurd world, there are the beast-like oppressors and the insect-like oppressed men. The later becomes the tool of the former to attain their shabby aims. But luckily enough not all the oppressed behave in all insect way. They are san, to a certain extent, and they make full use of their limited freedom in that lunatic situation and stand the responsibility to make another way out of the world for others. In Catch-22, Orr and Yossarian have perfectly embodies the thought of existentialism in terms of free choice.

3.1 Orr

Orr, Yossarian’s pixie-like roommate, represents the little man who is inconspicuous, long-sighted, persevering, and capable of achieving success at impossible odds. Orr always behaves in a funny way as a clown in Catch-22: he always puts crab apples in his cheeks which makes his words difficult to be understood; he has been beaten by a whore over his head with the heel of her shoe for fifteen or twenty minutes once in Rome，but he giggles through it, which makes others completely puzzled; Nearly every time he flies a combat mission, He will be shot down. People consider Orr pitiful, so does Yossarian. Yossarian’s such worrying seems rational because Orr has acted ridiculously. But is Orr really a so funny and simple-minded person? He remains enigmatic up to the last chapter. In fact, Orr makes himself look stupid, his funny behavior makes him a look of stupid innocence that nobody would ever think any cleverness of him．The oppressors will not think such a funny soldier would do anything against their control.

Orr is the personification of qualifies of intelligence and endurance which make possible the survival of humanity under the worst condition of oppression and exploitation (Milne 184). He banks on the military establishment’s general lack of imagination．He is a doer and admirably equipped to survive. He is completely awake what he wants, and that is the same thing that ostensibly energizes Yossarian-survival. To achieve it, Orr first pays the whore for being beaten. Then he chooses to do something as a fool and practices being shot down. At last，he goes to the ideal country. His successful escape to Sweden is ‘‘a miracle of human intelligence and human endurance” (458). It convinces Yossarian that escape is possible and leads to his own desertion near the end of the novel.

3.2 Yossarian

Heller propagates in this novel the absurdity of the world and the alienation of human beings, and at the same time he suggests the chance of free choice in the absurdity. Such a possibility is well embodied in the aviator-protagonist Yossarian. Living in all unfavorable circumstance, he resists the irrationality in an absurd way. Heller has description of Yossarian's appearance, his family background, let alone his life career. We know little about him except that he is big and strong, and 28 years old. We just can imagine what kind of person he is through our own imagination. Clearly Heller wants us to regard Yossarian as an ordinary man who can be any one of us who may act ridiculously in the absurd world. At the beginning, he is an upright and honest man with a strong feeling of patriotism. On the first missions，he behaved very bravely. For example, when he was on the mission to Ferrara, in order to fulfill his mission he came in carefully on his second bomb run and succeeded (though later Colonel Cathcart regards his second bomb as a “black eye”).

Heller himself once was a pilot in the Second World War. He had flown sixty missions during the war. On his thirty-seven mission, one of his-in-arms was seriously wounded, and that made Heller dearly realize that he was in great danger (Wang Shouren 152). Heller's such experience is well reproduced in the affair of Snowden's death.

Partly due to Nately's whore's attack, Snowden’s death, and his horrible experience in the “Eternal City” Rome, Yossarian slowly realizes that he cannot attempt to save his own life at the expense of others’. At last, Yossarian opts for desertion, which endangers him but gives the other men the right kind of moral example．Since using reason in the face of the irrational is futile，the way out of Catch-22 is simply to rebel, in Camna’s sense, to take a stand, to say “no” (Kennard 1639). Yossarian shows us his brevity by saying “no” to Colonel Cathcart’s deal, and it is a “no” to the absurd world. His decision to desert is climatic, affirms that successful protest is possible, however hopeless such protest can seem and however painful the immediate consequences may be. As James Draper once commented “although most critics identify Yossarian as a coward and an anti hero, they also sympathize with his urgent need to protect himself from this brutal universal law.” (Draper 1629)

Generally speaking, Yossarian is a hero of Black Humor. He is utterly aware of his situation. Not only does he not go along with evil trend, but also not belittle himself. At last he chooses to desert. It is a method of taking his life back into his own hand. His desertion is an openly rejection to a mentality of catch-22 and he makes his run for freedom. Yossarian’s desertion is a moral, responsible action because his choice sets a good example to those in an

absurd situation. He dose not only because he badly hopes to survive, but also because he does it for others. That is why chaplain and Major Danby support him. So Yossarian’s last desertion informs that whenever we make a choice, we must be responsible not only for ourselves, but for the others. This well embodies the existentialist free choice.

4. The Absurdity of the World

4.1 The Absolute power of the Bureaucracy

At the beginning of catch-22, Heller points out directly that “there was one catch...and that was Catch-22.”The word “catch” is a pun, meaning a hidden problem or difficulty．Such a catch entitles the bureaucratic members to achieve their grubby purpose by all means, and at the same time it forces the ruled men, the people in lower social position, just to accept death with no choice. In the world of Catch-22, one of the most frightening aspects is that the soldiers can not decide whether they will live or die. Their lives and deaths are in charge of the impersonal and brutal superiors, the bureaucracy. None of the superiors care about the winning or loss of the war and the living or deaths of the soldiers. They only think about their military status and money making. The fiercest war is not the war with the German army in the battlefield, but the war between the superiors to get more power.

General P.P.Peckem, “a handsom e, pink-skinned man of fifty-three” is a powerful superior in the squadron．He tries hard to find everyone's weakness but his own, and everyone absurd but himself since he himself writes the memoranda, the style of other officers in it are always turgid, stilted , or ambiguous，he has declared against General Dreedle, conquering General Dreedle will give him the aircraft and vital bases they need , take his operation into other areas. One day he dreams up a phr ase “bomb pattern” which virtually means nothing, but he finally makes others convinced that it is vital for the bombs to explode dose together and make a neat aerial photograph. He even recommends that the soldiers shall be sent to combat in full-dress uniform so that they will make a good impression on the enemy when they are shot down. He does all these only because he wants to be promoted. Soldiers’ lives are absolutely out of his consideration.

The authorities make full use of everything to punish those who dam to defy or question them. Clevinger is involved in an interrogation generated by Lieutenant Scheisskopf because of his aut hentic idea against Scheisskopf’s unjustified appointment, which irritates the Lieutenant seriously. So Clevinger is interrogated with non-existed accusation，and is deprived of the right to ask any question. The timid chaplain also is interrogated because of some peanut and some

non-existed accusations，partially because he has provoked Colonel Cathcart, his superior. To some extent，the superiors’ absolute power with no restri ction is entitled by Catch-22, which requires that the soldiers must follow the superiors word by word.

Catch-22 is absurd and such an absurdity rules and runs modern existence．The generals and colonels handle godlike powers over life and death because of Catch-22. Under Catch-22, it is the complete control of the superiors as General Peckem, General Dreedle, Colonel Cathcart, etc. None of them cares about winning or losing the war, but turning the war into a way of their promotion and moneymaking．Generally speaking, the arbitrary power that the officers’ exercise is enough to make them “gods,” the gods who do not set free people from hardship, but put them into the abyss of misery. In this squadron, it is they, the superiors, not the German enemy, that are the real and the greatest threat to the soldiers.

4.2 The Moral Insanity

Leon F. Seltzer has once said “to approach Catch-22’s absurdity, the key was not in broad metaphysical terms but in specific moral ones, since the book carried its greatest impact at the moral level” (Seltzer 75). Joseph Heller himself has described Catch-22as “a moral book dealing with man’s moral dilemma. People can’t distinguish between rational and irrational behavior, between the moral and the immoral. It’s insane” (Seltzer 76). Seltzer has also pointed out that “Heller himself has referred to the novel as a combination of allegory and realism—a strong indication that the book’s absurdity was conceived from the start as amoral absurdity…This absurdity is a product not of immora lity but of what might be called ‘moral insanity’” (Seltzer 76).

Of all the characters exemplifying moral insanity, in the novel Milo Minderbinder, the incredibly manipulative black market entrepreneur and squadron’s mess officer, is by far the most well-known one. He is one of the very few characters that are fully portrayed in the novel. When we first meet with Milo, he appears as an innocent young man. Early in this novel Yossarian thinks tha t “He [Yossarian] saw a simple，sincere face that was incapable of subtlety or guile，an honest，frank face with disunited large eyes, rusty hair, black eyebrows and an unfortunate reddish-brown mustache... It was a face of a mall of hardened integrity who could no more consciously violate the moral principles on which his virtue rested than he could transform him self into a despicable toad” (65-66). He remains as a ordinary mess officer in our mind until catch-22entitled “Milo the Mayor”. The more pages we read，the better we know what kind of person he is. What he has done makes him one of the most insidious villains in Catch-22. He is the second most outstanding character in this novel after Yossarian. He calls his business

enterprise a “syndicate”and names it “M&M Enterprise” in which he propagates everyone can have a share.

Milo Minderbinder is a typical person who represents the American business value after World War II，whose ultimate life aim is to chase the biggest profit．He is destined for success since he knows the world very well in which success is the only virtue, “He [Milo] is a symbol of a system that lies at the bottom of all the absurdity: the capitalist free enterprise” (Chang Yaoxin 477). Milo is also driven by such kind of desire, “Viewed from any traditional set of ethical norms he is corrupt” (Seltzer 86), but according to the absurd and morally insane standards he is moral. He is one of the most frightening characters because of his moral insanity. In a money-first society, it is comprehensible that Milo’s idea about friend and enemy, to serve his country and exploiting his country is frightening．People cannot assess him from traditional morals viewpoints，but have to put him in his own specific social and cultural background.

In a world “of chaos，of disorganization，of absurdity, of cruelty, of brutality, of insensitivity” (Seltzer 81), it is completely impossible to request the characters to behave along with the traditional values of morals. But this does not mean that they are amoral or immoral. Actually, they have their own standards of morals that are in line with the absurd world. We cannot purely blame Mrs Daneeka for what she has done. We have to take the whole absurd world in which they live into account “Given any social, political or economic system designed primarily to safeguard individualism and only secondarily to safeguard individuals, moral chaos must be the resul t” (Seltzer 88).

4.3 The Inevitability of Death

No one is wholly spared from suffering ,behind which lies death．Death，as Same says, is but one more absurdity in a meaningless world. “It is absurd that we are born; it is absurd that we die” (Sartre 547).

Mudd is remembered as the dead roommate in Yoss arian’s tent, who, except for his name, remains unknown and unclaimed.

He was simply a replacement pilot who had been killed in combat before he had

officially reported for duty. He had stopped at the operations tent to inquire the way to

the orderly-room tent and had been sent right into action because so many men had

completed the thirty-five missions required then that Captain Piltehard and Captain

Wren were finding it difficult to assemble the number of crews specified by Group.

(111)

He is killed just two hours after his arrival to pianosa on the mission to Orvieto because of Milo's contracts with both the American military and the German military. He does not even have an opportunity to unpack his bags. Mudd is one of all the unknown soldiers who never have a chance and who have to be dead. In fact, those known and unknown soldiers in Pianosa die not for their country, but for their corrupt and ambitious superiors. “To be dead is to be a prey for the living” (Sartre 543). Mudd is just one of those who have been destined to be the prey for the superiors. He is widely known dead, but since he has never formally gotten into the squadron, he could never be officially gotten out. He is still officially recorded alive, and becomes a dead living man．In the absurd world of Catch-22, man has neither right to live nor freedom to die. The soul of the deceased Mudd is floating here and there．

Those men would die in such an absurd world is a matter of circumstance．They are fated to death no matter whether they are willing or unwilling to，because of the absolute power of bureaucracy, the moral insanity, all of which present us an absurd world with the omnipotent Catch-22. In Pianosa, death is no longer the great unknowable act which limits the human. It is ubiquitous．Ridiculously the soldiers die not for their country, but for their brutal superiors，so their deaths appear meaningless，which refle cts the idea of Sartre’s work Mort sans S epulture (《死无葬身之地》) that War makes people suffer with no significance and die worthlessly. 5. Conclusion

The philosophy of existentialism generated in Germany, but it emerged in its contemporary form in Pads following World War II. It was popular in America after the 1950s, and had a grand influence on literature, art, sociology, religion，and so on. It is well-known that existentialism is the philosophic basis of Black Humor. As one of the most famous representative writer of black humor, Joseph Heller has made well use of some of the existentialist thoughts in his masterpiece Catch-22.

The existentialists are intensely concerned about alienation, so is Catch-22, in the absurd world, human beings are severely alienated-Catch-22 has twisted the life and spirit of people ,making some of them brutal and indifferent as beasts while others weak and incompetent as insects. There seems to be no hope for the world. But luckily not all the insect-oppressed are so weak and incompetent. They turn down to resign themselves to be the victims of the absurdity and alienation. Orr and Yossarian are leading figures of this group.

Freedom is another important thought of existentialism. 1t is not the freedom of doing

whatever one prefers, but “the freedom of choosing”. Catch-22, though full of absurdity and alienation, still contains a bright color of free choice, Orr and Yossarian are the greatest representatives. Orr and Yossarian stand the responsibility and fright absurdity with absurdity, they set an example for those oppressed that there is still hope and a way out of the absurdity. They have well embodied the idea that “I rebel, therefore I am.”

Maybe Joseph Heller has never claimed that to him literature is associated with the philosophy of existentialism, but according to the above study, we can know that the existentialist thoughts as absurdity and free choice have been well embodied in his masterpiece Catch-22 and that existentialism is one of the keys to have a better understanding of this novel.

Work Cited

Draper, James P. World Literature Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Inc, 1997.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22: with an Introduction by Malcolm Bradbury. New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1995.

Matuz, Roger. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1991.

Merrill, Sam. Playboy Interview: Joseph Heller. New York: Playboy Pr., 1975.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothing. Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House, 1993. Schacht, Richard. Alienation. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971.

Seed, David. The Fiction of Joseph Heller: Against the Grain. London: Macmillan, 1989. Seltzer, Leon F. Critical Essays on Joseph Heller. Boston: G.K. Hall& Co., 1984.

常耀信. 美国文学简史. 天津: 南开大学出版社, 2004.

潘利锋. 全球化语境与东西方文学. 长沙: 湖南人民出版社, 2004.

汤永宽. 第二十二条军规译本序. 上海: 上海译文出版社, 1981.

王守仁. 新编美国文学史. 上海: 上海外语教育出版社, 2004.

吴晓东. 20世纪外国文学专题. 北京: 北京大学出版社, 2002.

毕业论文小结

毕业论文完成之后，还以写一份毕业论文总结报告，这对自己来说，是一个总结，也是一个提醒。因为毕业论文的完成，既为大学四年划上了一个完美的句号，也为将来的人生之路做好了一个很好的铺垫。

我所选论文题目是“从存在主义的角度分析《第二十二条军规》”，之所以选择这个题目，是因为我对这部小说很感兴趣，而且感觉它具有挑战性，越是自己薄弱的环节越要去尝试。在论文写作过程中，有时感觉很辛苦，有时还会产生放弃的念头，但是最终坚持了下来，出色的完成了我的毕业设计，为了自己的目标，更为了自己的选择。

开始是搜集资料。在指导老师的指点下，通过各种渠道开始准备工作——通过网络、图书馆搜集相关学术论文、核心期刊、书籍等。通过一个月的深入学习，搜集了一大堆与毕业设计相关的资料，在杨老师的指导下，摒弃了一些无关紧要的内容，保留了有参考价值的资料作为备用。在这段时期，我整天出入图书馆。在中国知网上，我搜索了一些学术论文和期刊文章；在Springer上，我搜索了外文文献资料，参考了一些毕业论文样本和一些毕业论文设计总结；在常见的搜索引擎中，我了解到一些相关的知识，同时特意浏览了大量的外文网站，并将这些内容列成提纲，便于以后查询，以减少后期工作量。

接下来，我开始对所搜集的资料进行整理、分析研究，并制作了课题研究的方案及网站设计规划，开题报告完成之后随即进入紧张而有序的写作之中。根据取其精华，去其糟粕的原则，我撰写了初稿，并加入了自己新颖的见解，特别是在解析论文中心过程中，吸取其它外文资料的优点，并加入自己的创新点。在此期间，我多次与杨老师电话或短信以及利用E-mail进行沟通，听取老师好的建议，积极采纳。

老师将初稿修改后及时反馈给我，看了之后才发现论文中的论文漏洞很多，特别是论文的格式，而就论文内容规划来说，提出了几点建议，如不要不分主次轻重性，要用一个章节作为典型来表达你的创新点。至此，我发现，要干好一件事并非那么简单，但也不是很难，敷衍了事是万万不可的，对待任何事情都要认真去思考，用思想来完成任务。

一篇优秀的论文不是写出来的，而是修改出来的，这需要的是耐心，还要用心。在网站的制作过程中，我遇到的问题很多，有些是在自己技术所在范围之外，每当无法实现自己的想法或者运行不下去的时候，我就会出现浮躁的情绪，但是我没有放弃，而是适时地调节自己的心态，在同学老师的帮助下，完成了初次的设计。越是不懂的东西才要去