Catch 22: Satire On WWII

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many institutions. In Good as Gold it is the White House and
government as a whole, and in Catch-22 it is the military and medical
institutions.
In Catch-22 the military is heavily satirized. Heller does this by
criticizing it. Karl agrees with this statement by offering an example of the
satire of both the military and civilian institutions in Catch-22:

The influence of mail clerk Wintergreen, the computer
foul-up that promotes Major Major, and the petty
rivalries among officers satirizes the communication
failures and the cut-throat competition Heller saw
within both the civilian and military bureaucracies of
the 1950's. Even the Civil Rights movement, not yet
widespread in the 1950's, is satirized in Colonel
Cathcart attitudes toward enlisted men. (23)

Karl summarizes the satirazation of the military with this:

The enemy in Heller's book is not simply the chaos ...

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when Colonel Cathcart is aspiring to become a general. In this chapter
religion is satirized in a number of ways. The first is when Colonel Cathcart
uses it for a social icon to improve his chance of becoming general. Dr. Peek
agrees with this by saying ". . . we see a satire on religion used as a matter
of social status" (25).
In Catch-22 there is also one more major satiriazation it is that of
industry and finance. The reason this is true is because of certain things Milo
says such as "What's good for the syndicate is good for the country" (Karl 34).
Good as Gold is manly a satire on the White House and government. Heller
portrays the White House as being, "disgraceful," ...

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