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 34-42

“The Eternal City” chapter is different from every other chapter in the book. First, it is not funny. Also, it is different stylistically. Consider how style and tone work together in this chapter and what effect they produce on the reader. In addition, while the Eternal City is one nickname for Rome, can you suggest another way we may interpret the chapter’s title?

Finally we learn (in one of the most gruesome scenes I know) what Snowden’s secret was. Discuss that scene and what message you take from it. Is it the same one you think Heller intends?

Now that you have finished the book, do you think its unconventional organization helps convey its themes, or that it gets in the way? Consider how delaying the scene of Snowden being mortally wounded changes the way we perceive Yossarian.

Critics and readers argue about the way Yossarian acts at the end when he initially takes the deal Colonel Korn and Colonel Cathcart offer him and then decides to renege on it, and whether his final decision is consistent with his character, a deviation from it, or an evolution of it. Where do you stand?

 
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