Reading Response Prompts

 
These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Even if you choose to pursue an idea of your own, however, or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. In any case, I suggest doing the reading first, then checking the prompts.  For more information, review the listserv assignment.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22: Chapters 10-22

The bombing run over Bologna is one of the great scenes in the book. This is war fought at a distance: Yossarian cannot see the people on whom he is dropping bombs or those firing flak at his plane. Who or what then is the enemy, and how does Heller make the scene dramatic and vivid?

As I briefly mentioned last class, one unusual attribute of the book is a technique of delayed meaning. Something happens, is said by a character, or is referred to by the narrator that does not immediately make sense at the time we read it. However, later — whether a few sentences, paragraphs, pages, or chapters — we get some new piece of information that solves our confusion. Another aspect of this technique is the book’s deviation from a standard linear, chronological structure. When we progress from chapter to the next, we are often not going forward in time. These two techniques work together in this novel. Find an example and discuss how it works — what we learn first, what is left unexplained, and then how it is eventually explained.

More broadly, why do you think Heller engages in this delayed meaning technique? Readers usually expect a chronological structure, to the point that it seems natural. From the time we are children, we want stories to start at the beginning and progress forward to the end. We may tolerate a flashback occasionally, but the flashbacks must be clearly indicated, usually with a break in the text and maybe some tag like “Five days earlier . . . ” Why does Heller violate readers’ expectations this way?

Satire is comedy with a purpose beyond entertainment. It stems from frustration, anger, and even outrage at various forms of stupidity and vice. It depends upon exaggeration, but the target of the satire must remain recognizable. Indeed, the effect of great satire is to shock us with a sense of exaggeration, and then shock us even more by showing us that the satirical depiction is much less exaggerated than we initially thought. Take any satirical passage in this reading and discuss specifically what Heller is satirizing.

 
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