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The Art of Paradox in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

Author: ZhangZuo
Tutor: ZhangZhuZuo
School: Hebei Normal
Course: Comparative Literature and World Literature
Keywords: Paradox Heller Catch-22 Black Humor
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Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2010
Downloads: 366
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Abstract

Heller is an undisputed leader of the "Black Humor" legion, and his debut, but also his masterpiece– Catch-22,vividly depicts living environment and mental state of westerners in fifties or sixties of the twentieth century. It reflects the author’s keen insight into the status of human existence as well as its image shown strong literary foundation.As carrying a model for the tripod in the "Black Humor", Catch-22, the most prominent feature is paradox that presents in its themes, language, and structure. When People read Catch-22,they seem to have caught by the infinite loop paradox. The paradox is an important way to reveals the world’s absurdity and the existence of fear for Heller, also is the best entry point to understand Catch-22,However, there are so little domestic academic works about its systematic in-depth explanation of the theory from the view of paradox.Black humor itself owns the color of paradox," humor "should have been filled with laughter, makes people easy with a crisp style, but after it is dyed" black "," humor "is changed into catabolic humor, and is a kind of humor with terror, anxiety , pessimism, despair, also is helpless before the confusion and difficult , and is the performance when one has to laugh to dilute the of terror ,and is "Gallows humor." paradox is the basis of "black humor", also the core of Catch-22, this paper is based on the basic types of the paradox and the collation of the paradox in literary criticism, and it analyzes the loop type, sophistry-style, self-contradictory paradox-style language of paradox " in the Catch-22,also explores the paradox of its structural level, that is the plot of anti-logic, as well as the antinomy of the figure setting. From the above mentioned, I can sum up the textual functions of paradox - sense of humor; theme function of paradox - black. We achieve a more complete explanation of paradox art, and do something meaningful reference for who works similar studies in future.There are five parts:Introduction: this part describes the status quo of Catch-22, I can lead to the study entry point for the author - paradox from the weak links of the study Part one: Main content is the paradox of the theory of pedigree study. In addition to the two basic types of simple explanation of paradox, it also discusses the paradox of the twentieth century pay attention to the reasons for that; the "new criticism" Brooks commanding general discussion of the paradox.Part two: I want to make the appropriate interpretation of the paradox in the text of Catch-22, Section one. the main analysis is that paradox in the language level; paradoxical sophistry, circular cycle-style dialogue, narrative language and characters inner monologue of the self-contradictory. All of these are in order To accommodate theme to show human existence predicament of Americans in the absurd in a post-modern society. Section two. It Focuses on analysis of paradox on the work’s structure: plot design of violating Cause-and-effect relationship, antinomy of figure setting, in order to provide a footnote for Heller, "in the construction of the structure of the novel, and strive to make it appear there is no structure at all.”Part three: It primarily makes evaluation of the function of paradox on the Catch-22, focusing on interpretation of paradox generated textual function - humor; theme function - Black. Paradox can not do without black humor, black humor is to convey through paradox.Conclusion: This part summarizes the whole paper and points out that the use of paradox is an important reason to make Catch-22, into carrying a model for the tripod in black humor. At the same time, I must admit that the deficiency in research papers, and propose ideas for the future further research.

The Art of Paradox in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

Abstract

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