Achilles and Yossarian

About the Book

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 has been interpreted from many different vantage points in the nearly fifty years since it was first published. One approach that has not been effectively used has been to consider the influence of Homer’s Iliad on Heller’s novel. From teaching a Humanities seminar in war literature some years ago I had become convinced that this Homeric influence existed and I wrote to the late Mr. Heller to see if he would confirm this impression of mine. In a letter which I received from him in 1994 he stated that he had been thinking about the Iliad all of the time he was writing Catch-22 but wanted to avoid obvious comparisons. He confirmed to me his interest in the Iliad in personal conversations I had the privilege to have with him in 1997. In an interview which Mr. Heller had with the journal Contemporary Literature in 1998, he was asked “Were you thinking of Homer’s ending when you wrote the conclusion to Catch-22?” He replied, “Very much so.” This study offers a strong argument for an original interpretation of the intriguing relationship between Catch-22 and the Iliad.

About the Author

Leon Golden is Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages at Florida State University and formerly Director if the Program in Humanities at that university. He has published books and articles in the areas of Classical tragedy, epic, and comedy as well as in the area of Classical literary criticism. His most important contribution to Classical literary theory has been to challenge the commonly held view that Aristotle’s doctrine of catharsis consists of the medical process of purging the emotions of pity and fear from the audience that experiences tragedy. He has argued, instead, that catharsis should be interpreted as “intellectual clarification;” the word kartharsis in Greek has several meanings including that of “clarification” and it is used in several philosophical contexts in this sense. Moreover “clarification” is the most effective rendition of the term “catharsis” in Aristotle’s famous definition of tragedy in chapter 6 of the Poetics. He has also applied the views of psychoanalysts, philosophers, and literary critics to understanding the complex structure of comedy; a genre that ranges in its scope from pure amusement as a “holiday for the superego” to political and social satire and to the clarification of important aspects of the human condition.