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Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Fake Friends:
There are many instances in Catch-22 of irony on a small scale: Heller's novel is full of contradictions, paradoxes, and oxymorons. But there are also situational ironies, contradicting consequences of the strange circumstances in which the soldiers find themselves. Perhaps the most overarching and significant instance of this type of irony in the novel is the case of Yossarian's friends.
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Chapter 3: Havermeyer
Explanation and Analysis—Started from the Top:
When the narrator introduces Colonel Cargill to the reader, his description is one of the earliest, and most extensive, uses of Heller's characteristic ironic style. The verbal irony is extensive:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. [...] He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
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Chapter 26: Aarfy
Explanation and Analysis—Split Personality:
In Chapter 26, after Yossarian's first injury in Rome, he and Dunbar move from bed to bed in the hospital, impersonating other patients, in order to continue lying next to each other. After earlier impersonating Dunbar to Major Sanderson, Yossarian finds himself in the bed of a man named Fortiori. Sanderson, frustrated and believing that Yossarian really is Fortiori, wants the man in front of him to stop the nonsense. In Sanderson's scolding, there is an instance of dramatic irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+You'd better get a grip on yourself before it's too late. First you're Dunbar. Now you're Yossarian. The next thing you know you'll be claiming you're Washington Irving. Do you know what's wrong with you? You've got a split personality.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Fortiori:
Dunbar and Yossarian have both sustained injuries and, in Chapter 26, are back in the hospital. They would both prefer to lie next to each other, so they move from bed to bed, impersonating other patients. Both Yossarian and Dunbar, at various points, pretend to be a patient called Anthony E. Fortiori, who himself has been swapping beds as well. (He is in the hospital, according to the doctors, with a stone in one of his salivary glands, but if he is anything like Yossarian, that injury is likely fake.)
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Chapter 35: Milo the Militant
Explanation and Analysis—Distinctions:
Milo's two-timing business dealings, described in Chapter 35, are the subject of another one of Heller's contradictory, ironical constructions:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Milo had been earning many distinctions for himself. He had flown fearlessly into danger and criticism by selling petroleum and ball bearings to Germany at good prices in order to make a good profit and help maintain a balance of power between the contending forces. [...] With a devotion to purpose above and beyond the line of duty, he then raised the price of food in his mess halls so high that all officers and enlisted men had to turn over all their pay to him in order to eat.
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Chapter 41: Snowden
Explanation and Analysis—Ether Too:
As Yossarian lies in bed, nearly dying, in Chapter 41, Heller depicts his strange situation using rich, complex, multi-sensory imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Yossarian played dead with his eyes shut while the clerk admitted him by shuffling some papers, and then he was rolled away slowly into a stuffy, dark room with searing spotlights overhead in which the cloying smell of formaldehyde and sweet alcohol was even stronger. The pleasant, permeating stink was intoxicating. He smelled ether too and heard glass tinkling. He listened with secret, egotistical mirth to the husky breathing of the two doctors. It delighted him that they thought he was unconscious and did not know he was listening.
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