American Literature books summary
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man who called Adam; and she confesses that Tiny learned about the afiair from her. She was so angry about Willie leaving her to go back to Lucy that she told Tiny out of revenge, knowing that, by doing so, she was all but guaranteeing Willies death. Jack blames Tiny rather than Sadie, and Sadie agrees to make a statement which Jack can use to bring about Tinys downfall.
A week later, Dufiy summons Jack to see him. He offers Jack his job back, with a substantial raise over Jacks already substantial income. Jack refuses, and tells Tiny he knows about his role in Willies death. Tiny is stunned, and frightened, and when Jack leaves he feels heroic. But his feeling of moral heroism quickly dissolves into an acidic bitterness, because he realizes he is trying to make Tiny the sole villain as a way of denying his own share of responsibility. Jack withdraws into numbness, not even opening a letter from Anne when he receives it. He receives a letter from Sadie with her statement, saying that she is moving away and that she hopes Jack will let matters drop--Tiny has no chance to win the next gubernatorial election anyway, and if Jack pursues the matter Annes name will be dragged through the mud. But Jack had already decided not to pursue it.
At the library Jack sees Sugar-Boy, and asks him what he would do if he learned that there was a man besides Adam who was responsible for Willies death. Sugar-Boy says he would kill him, and Jack nearly tells him about Tinys role. But he decides not to at the last second, and instead tells Sugar-Boy that it was a joke. Jack also goes to see Lucy, who has adopted Sibyl Freys child, which she believes is Toms. She tells Jack that Tom died of pneumonia shortly after the accident, and that the baby is the only thing that enabled her to live. She also tells him that she believes--and has to believe--that Willie was a great man. Jack says that he also believes it.
Jack goes to visit his mother at Burdens Landing, where he learns that she is leaving Theodore Murrell, the Young Executive. He is surprised to learn that she is doing so because she loved Judge Irwin all along. This knowledge changes Jacks long-held impression of his mother as a woman without a heart, and helps to shatter his belief in the Great Twitch. At the train station, he lies to his mother, and tells her that Judge Irwin killed himself not because of anything that Jack did, but because of his failing health. He thinks of this lie as his last gift to her.
After his mother leaves, he goes to visit Anne, and tells her the truth about his parentage. Eventually, he and Anne are married, and in the early part of 1939, when Jack is writing his story, they are living in Judge Irwins house in Burdens Landing. The Scholarly Attorney, now frail and dying, lives with them. Jack is working on a book about Cass Mastern, whom he believes he can finally understand. After the old man dies and the book is finished, Jack says, he and Anne will leave Burdens Landing--stepping "out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time."
CATCH-22
(Joseph Heller)
SOME INFO ON JOSEPH HELLER
b. May 1, 1923, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.
American writer whose novel Catch-22 (1961) was one of the most significant works of protest literature to appear after World War II. The satirical novel was both a critical and a popular success, and a film version appeared in 1970.Heller flew 60 combat missions as a bombardier with the U.S. Air Force in Europe. He received an M.A. at Columbia University in 1949 and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Oxford (1949-50). He taught English at Pennsylvania State University (1950-52) and worked as an advertising copywriter for the magazines Time (1952-56) and Look (1956-58) and as promotion manager for McCalls (1958-61), meanwhile writing Catch-22 in his spare time. The plot of the novel centres on the antihero Captain John Yossarian, stationed at an airstrip on a Mediterranean island in World War II, and portrays his desperate attempts to stay alive. The "catch" in Catch-22 involves a mysterious Air Force regulation, which asserts that a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions; but, if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. The term Catch-22 thereafter entered the English language as a reference to a proviso that trips one up no matter which way one turns.His later novels including Something Happened (1974), an unrelievedly pessimistic novel, Good as Gold (1979), a satire on life in Washington, D.C., and God Knows (1984), a wry, contemporary-vernacular monologue in the voice of the biblical King David, were less successful. Closing Time, a sequel to Catch-22, appeared in 1994. Hellers dramatic work includes the play We Bombed in New Haven (1968).
CONTEXT
Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. He served as an Air Force bombardier in World War II, and has enjoyed a long career as a writer and a teacher. His bestselling books include Something Happened, Good as Gold, Picture This, God Knows, and Closing Time--but his first novel, Catch-22, remains his most famous and acclaimed work.
Written while Heller worked producing ad copy for a New York City marketing firm, Catch-22 draws heavily on Hellers Air Force experience, and presents a war story that is at once hilarious, grotesque, bitterly cynical, and utterly stirring. The novel generated a great deal of controversy upon its publication; critics tended either to adore it or despise it, and those who hated it did so for the same reason as the critics who loved it. Over time, Catch-22 has become one of the defining novels of the twentieth century. It presents an utterly unsentimental vision of war, stripping all romantic pretense away from combat, replacing visions of glory and honor with a kind of nightmarish comedy of violence, bureaucracy, and paradoxical madness.
Unlike other anti-romantic war novels, such as Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 relies heavily on humor to convey the insanity of war, presenting the horrible meaninglessness of armed conflict through a kind of desperate absurdity, rather than through graphic depictions of suffering and violence. Catch-22 also distinguishes itself from other anti-romantic war novels by its core values: Yossarians story is ultimately not one of despair, but one of hope; the positive urge to live and to be free can redeem the individual from the dehumanizing machinery of war. The novel is told as a disconnected series of loosely related, tangential stories in no particular chronological order; the final narrative that emerges from this structural tangle upholds the value of the individual in the face of the impersonal, collective military mass; at every stage, it mocks insincerity and hypocrisy even when they appear to be triumphant.
SUMMARY FOR "CATCH-22"
Chapters 1-5
Yossarian is in a military hospital in Italy with a liver condition that isnt quite jaundice. He is not really even sick, but he prefers the hospital to the war outside, so he pretends to have a pain in his liver. The doctors are unable to prove him wrong, so they let him stay, perplexed at his failure to develop jaundice. Yossarian shares the hospital ward with his friend Dunbar; a bandaged, immobile man called the soldier in white; and a pair of nurses Yossarian suspect hate him. One day an affable Texan is brought into the ward, where he tries to convince the other patients that "decent folk" should get extra votes. The Texan is so nice that everyone hates him. A chaplain comes to see Yossarian, and although he confuses the chaplain badly during their conversation, Yossarian is filled with love for him. Less than ten days after the Texan is sent to the ward, everyone but the soldier in white flees the ward, recovering from their ailments and returning to active duty.
Outside the hospital there is a war going on, and millions of boys are bombing each other to death. No one seems to have a problem with this arrangement except Yossarian, who once argued with Clevinger, an officer in his group, about the war. Yossarian claimed that everyone was trying to kill him. Clevinger argued that no one was trying to kill Yossarian personally, but Yossarian has no patience for Clevingers talk of countries and honor and insists that they are trying to kill him. After being released from the hospital, Yossarian sees his roommate Orr and notices that Clevinger is still missing. He remembers the last time he and Clevinger called each other crazy, during a night at the officers club when Yossarian announced to everyone present that he was superhuman because no one had managed to kill him yet. Yossarian is suspicious of everyone when he gets out of the hospital; he has a meal in Milos mess hall, then talks to Doc Daneeka, who enrages Yossarian by telling him that Colonel Cathcart has raised to fifty the number of missions required before a soldier can be discharged. The previous number was forty-five. Yossarian has flown forty missions.
Yossarian talks to Orr, who tells him an irritating story about how he liked to keep crab apples in his cheeks when he was younger. Yossarian briefly remembers the time a whore had beaten Orr over the head with her shoe in Rome outside Natelys whores kid sisters room. Yossarian notices that Orr is even smaller than Huple, who lives near Hungry Joes tent. Hungry Joe has nightmares whenever he isnt scheduled to fly a mission the next day; his screaming keeps