As anyone who has ever suffered the frustration of trying to explain a joke to someone who doesn’t get it knows, analyzing comedy can suck a lot of the pleasure out of the experience. Be that as it may, comedy is serious stuff, and probably harder to do well than tragedy, which means that we need to try to determine exactly what make it effective. The most consistent technique Heller uses is a kind of ironic non sequitur, in which the narrator states a fact in the novel, follows it with a second statement (sometimes broader, sometimes on the same scale) that is transparently contradictory to the first, creating a paradox. However, he then states an explanation — which is actually a premise that he has simply delayed until after he gives us the consequence of the premise — so that the apparent paradox now perfectly obeys the rules of logic, thus proving that the premise is irrational. Pick any passage from the novel you see following this pattern and explain in detail how the joke works.
Another crucial aspect of the narrative that contributes to the book’s comedy is a kind of delayed meaning or explanation. Certain details are stated as facts even though they make no apparent sense whatsoever. Only later does Heller give us more information that settles our confusion. One example (by no means the only one) is the “dead man” who shares Yossarian’s tent. Consider how this technique contributes to the novel’s themes.
Yossarian is one of the more memorable protagonists in American fiction (though not quite an original, with origins that go back at least to Herman Melville’s Bartleby in his short story “Bartleby the Scrivener,” whose motto is “I would prefer not to”). What makes him suitable to be the central figure of this novel?