a burkean approach to 'catch-22

A Burkean Approach to "Catch-22"Author(s): James S. MullicanSource: College Literature, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter, 1981), pp. 42-52Published by: College LiteratureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111359 .Accessed: 11/04/2014 19:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

College Literature is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 196.21.233.64 on Fri, 11 Apr 2014 19:38:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

42

A BURKEAN APPROACH TO CA TCH-22

James S. Mullican

Catch-22, often described as a comic novel, could with greater justice be designated as an anatomy or Menippean satire, in the sense in which

Northrop Frye (Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 303-314) uses these terms. Heller's characters are not well-rounded "real people" who reveal their per sonalities in a rich social setting, as they might in a novel, nor are they even

psychological archetypes, as in a romance. Instead, they are flat, stylized characters whose purpose is to embody certain ideas and attitudes. Through their interaction with one another, the characters create a pattern that con stitutes a vision of modern bureaucracy. Catch-22 is thus an anatomy of

modern bureaucracy and of the types of persons who operate it and who are victimized by it. To understand this anatomy, it is necessary to understand the fictional pattern and the elements that make it up.

Kenneth Burke, in his philosophical writing, also has a vision of human

beings living in society, a vision that often parallels Heller's fictional vision. In his critical writing, Burke offers more than a vision; he offers a termi nology for discussing the vision and a technique of "indexing," whereby elements of a literary work may be delineated and held up for a clear view, revealing ideas and attitudes, along with their patterns and emphases. Burke's terminology and technique of analysis thus offer ideal instruments for analyzing Heller's anatomy. Once this analysis is complete, Heller's vi sion of human beings and their linguistic behavior in society reveals some resemblance to Kenneth Burke's definition of man and philosophy of lan guage. Thus Heller's anatomy and Burke's critical methods and philosophy are complementary: Burke's philosophy of literary form sheds light on the

meaning of Catch-22, which acts in many respects as an embodiment and enactment of Burke's philosophy of language and definition of man.

Catch-22 is a "representative anecdote" l of what goes on in a modern

bureaucracy whose denizens care little for the overt and stated goals?in this case, winning the war and preserving democracy?of the institution

which they "serve." Instead, such types care only about their place within the hierarchy of the institution. From the standpoint of the rational per son?the function of Yossarian?such types are mad inhabitants of a mad

world of feathers in caps, black eyes, straight marching rows, loyalty oaths, and tight bomb patterns. Thus, within an organization a kind of institution al logic asserts itself, perfectly coherent and rational within an enclosed sys tem, but insane to the person who measures behavior in terms of the real


A BURKEAN APPROACH TO CATCH-22 43

world and the purposes of the institution. Heller has composed an anecdote so representative that "Catch-22," no less than "Babbitt," has entered our

vocabulary to name a human and social phenomenon, in this instance, the absurdity of institutional logic.

Many of the denizens of the bureaucratic world of Catch-22 are afflicted with what Burke would call the "hierarchic psychosis,"

2 the tendency hu man beings have to order any society into a hierarchy and the desire to climb within the hierarchy. For Burke the need to form hierarchies is

grounded in our linguistic ability to abstract, to move from the concrete to ever higher levels of abstraction. Burke argues that man, "the symbol-using animal," has a natural tendency to move up the abstraction ladder and to

arrange his terms in a hierarchic order under some all-encompassing "god term." An ideology that rules a social group?whether a philosophy, or a

theology, or the unspoken assumptions of a culture?consists of values (terms) ordered in accord with their relative importance. Such titular god terms as

"democracy," "capitalism," "socialism," or "dialectical mate

rialism" each rules over its own formal or informal philosophy and guide to action. For Burke a philosophy consists of an ordered series of statements about the nature of reality; it implies a set of values, graded by their impor tance. Burke contends that this linguistic hierarchy implants itself on the so cial hierarchy. The leader of the hierarchy becomes the representative of the entire social order and even of the ideology itself. Thus the leader and the people on the various lower rungs in the hierarchy owe their positions to the ideology they profess. So long as everyone believes in the ideology and values of the social organization, the society functions peacefully. But

whenever the theory underlying the system is no longer believed or when people within the social hierarchy use the system for their own ends, the hierarchy can become "psychotic." This condition prevails in Catch-22. Yossarian and, increasingly, other men in the squadron come to perceive certain officers as manipulating the system for their own benefit and acting in ways contrary to the ideology. Such god-terms as "patriotism," "democ racy," and even "freedom" become dirty words for the victims in the corp orate enterprise.

All the most odious characters?Cathcart, Peckem, Dreedle, Scheiss kopf?have the "hierarchic psychosis" to an extreme degree. Colonel Cath cart is so enamored of hierarchy that he won't even engage in an orgy unless he can get something out of it, i.e., improve his position in the hierarchy. The behavior of these "psychotics" causes a rational person such as Yos sarian to renounce hierarchy and to suspect the ideals that support it. Yos sarian comments, "Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs,

Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal." And again: "When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human


44 COLLEGE LITERATURE

tragedy." 3 In such a situation, the institutional logic within the hierarchy

can become so outrageous and absurd that Aarfy's perpetration of rape and murder can be condoned, while Yossarian is placed under arrest for being absent without leave.

Catch-22 dramatizes the unfortunate real-life fact that bureaucratic exploiters are often successful in using ordinary people as victims to achieve their selfish purposes. In everyday life a knowledge of such exploi tation creates tension and unhappiness in such observers as Joseph Heller and the readers of his fiction. How can we deal psychologically with the ten sions created by this awareness? By eating our liver, as Captain Black so in delicately suggests? Kenneth Burke suggests another way: to compose or ex

perience a work of art as a means of dealing with psychological tensions; the work of art thus becomes a "medicine" or a "strategy to encompass a sit uation." An important strategy adopted in Catch-22 is the "comic atti tude," whereby the reader is invited to laugh at such absurdities and to ridi cule such exploiters. The book may thus be considered as "equipment for living" or a "proverb writ large" for the consolation and vengeance of those who are troubled by the cruelty and stupidity of those dominated by the "hierarchic psychosis."

Burke's concept of "literature as equipment for living" and as a "proverb writ large" is worth dwelling on for a moment.4 To discover the

meaning of a work of art, Burke tries to discover the symbolic action in the work. He probes for the psychological problem that the author feels im pelled to resolve. For Burke a literary work begins in a problem, a situation; the problem is resolved only when the author can devise "a strategy to en compass a situation." The literature is thus "medicine" for the author and potentially so for the readers, who may share the problem in some way. Literature thus operates in a way similar to the proverb: "Proverbs are de signed for consolation or vengeance, for admonition or exhortation, for foretelling. Or they name typical, recurrent situations" (PLF, p. 293).

Burke suggests that "the most complete and sophisticated works [may] be considered somewhat as 'proverbs writ large'

"

(PLF, p. 296). Proverbs, hence literature, can thus be considered as "strategies for dealing with sit uations" (PLF, p. 296).

Catch-22 is a "proverb writ large," designed for both consolation and vengeance. Anyone living in a modern bureaucracy?the federal govern

ment (see any issue of The Washington Monthly), the armed forces, univer sities, academic departments in universities?from time to time feels a need for the medicine offered in Catch-22, which consoles us by implying that such is the way of bureaucracies and that we are not alone in our suffering.

Catch-22 affords us vengeance by providing literary Voodoo dolls, proto types for us to excoriate and ridicule as they scramble up the organization.

The medicine Heller offers is laughter. We don't have to heed Captain



Black's injunction to eat our liver; we have a better way, for a healthier and happier life: we can ridicule such characters, denigrate their rewards, and at

least get a good laugh out of both the prototypes and their real-life counter

parts. The pleasure is all the greater, for author and readers, if others can

laugh with us and if the "psychotics" also read the anatomy and under stand how contemptible they really are. Thus Heller has not only named a situation by creating a "representative anecdote"; he has suggested a strat

egy for dealing with the situation?a bitter and savage laughter. As can be seen, then, Kenneth Burke's vision of a literary work as sym

bolic action provides an excellent terminology for discussing Catch-22. But Burke offers more than terminology; he offers a technique for analyzing the medicine and describing how it is concocted. This technique Burke calls

"indexing," a method of discerning "what goes with what." Burke outlines this technique in his article, "Fact, Inference, and Proof in the Analysis of

Literary Symbolism." 5 Burke recommends that the literary critic select and

collect significant "facts" (i.e., terms) in a literary work to determine "what goes with what." These terms may be related to the imagery (as in Caroline Spurgeon's Shakespeare's Imagery), to the plot, to the characters, indeed to any element in the literary work. To discern a philosophical mean

ing in Catch-22, it may be best to index the characters. They can be placed into three categories: Victims, Exploiters, and Survivors.

The Victims are the most numerous inhabitants of the fiction: Hungry Joe, Clevinger, McWatt, Mudd, Kraft, Snowden, Kid Sampson, Dobbs,

Dunbar, Nately, and Appleby all meet death, in a variety of bizarre and sometimes mysterious circumstances. By the end of the anatomy, Yossarian can say, "I just realized it. . . . They've got all my pals, haven't they?" (p. 425). The clear implication is that the "they" are not the Germans, but the second group, the Exploiters.

The Exploiters?Cathcart, Minderbinder, Peckem, Dreedle, Black, Korn, Scheisskopf?live most fully in the world of the "hierarchic psy chosis," a world of greed and grasping for power and position. This ab stract world has its own logic and values, quite at odds with ordinary human needs. The Exploiters use men to gain their own desires and order human

beings in accord with their own sick symmetry. Their rhetorical weapons are

symbolic, using ideals on the one hand and lies, threats, cajolery, coercion, deception, and trickery on the other.

In this world few survive as integral human beings, but a few do: Orr, Chaplain Tappman, and Yossarian. The Survivor par excellence is Orr, and it is instructive to see how he accomplishes the feat. The key ingredients are his humor, his complete dissociation from the hierarchic world of the Cath carts, and his skill in humble, non-symbolic, mechanical matters. At the outset Orr, Yossarian's tent-mate, seems a dippy little fellow, perhaps a bit



crazy. He goes around giggling, with horse chestnuts in his cheeks. In the tent he is always working on ways to make the tent more comfortable; for example, he works indefatigably on a tiny valve for a home-made stove. Yet despite his mechanical skill, he crash-lands his plane on every mission. It is only at the end of the anatomy that we see the method in Orr's madness: he is practicing crash-landing as part of his plan for desertion. Orr certainly

has none of the qualifications that will admit him to the hierarchic world of the Peckems, Dreedles, or Cathcarts, so much so that Yossarian worries

whether Orr can survive in their society. As Yossarian perceives him, "Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life." Yet by the end of the fiction we see that Orr is the only person besides

Yossarian and Tappman in the squadron that survives with any semblance of integrity. In Heller's world it is possible to survive modern bureaucracy, but to do so one must renounce its rewards and its values, and regard its symbolism with severe skepticism.

Yossarian is of course the centerpiece in Catch-22. His value in resolving the conflict of values among Victims, Exploiters, and Survivors resides in the fact that he is potentially a member of all the groups. He is a Victim

throughout most of the account, being forced to risk his life during many missions. He is, however, more successful than the other Victims in coping with his situation, being successful in avoiding a number of combat mis sions by holding his temperature at precisely 101 degrees. He is so successful in malingering and in general cussedness that he is potentially one of the Ex

ploiters. He gains this status by successfully refusing to fly missions. When he cannot be intimidated, the Exploiters find they must try to buy him

off?offering him a promotion to major and a trip back home to sell war bonds. Yossarian has it within himself to see the benefits of this course of action, however odious the act itself may be, since he tentatively accepts their proposition. Yossarian eventually ends up as a survivor with integrity by becoming an outsider and renouncing the values and potential rewards of the bureaucracy. Yossarian does not, however, totally give up the sym bolism of patriotism. He values love of country, valor in its service, and the

symbols of that valor. What he cannot tolerate is the misuse of these ideals for personal ends:

"Christ, Danby, I earned that medal I got, no matter what their reasons were

for giving it to me. I've flown seventy goddam combat missions. Don't talk to

me about fighting to save my country. Now I'm going to fight a little to save

myself. The country's not in danger any more, but I am." (Catch-22, p. 435)

Yossarian, unlike Orr, values symbolism, even while understanding its mis uses. In fact, Yossarian even distrusts his own ideals and motivations, re

marking, "I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings" (Catch-22, p. 441).



Yossarian's function is to be a focal point among the values of the three groups: Exploiters, Victims, Survivors. In so doing Yossarian embodies the ethical ideal of Heller's fiction. Despite his human flaws, he is an ideal per son, rational about institutions: they should serve the ends for which they have been created. He is willing to do his duty?when absolutely neces

sary!?to preserve his country and, on occasion, he is even capable of heroism to accomplish his mission. He is compassionate toward other human beings, as witnessed by his concern and care for Snowden. When ever there is a choice between a principle and a person, he takes the person; whenever there is a choice between an institutional value and a human value, he takes the human value. Yossarian is critical in discerning the fraud of the Exploiters and adept in unmasking their ploys, having nothing but contempt for their machinations. He refuses to save his hide by the simple expedient of liking the Exploiters and accepting their odious deal. He is no

zealot, going out of his way to embrace a cause, but there are certain per sons and causes he will not cooperate with. Unlike Faulkner's Flem Snopes, there are some things Yossarian will not do, even to save his skin. He is, in short, Everyman, a decent, sane human being in a mad society. Heller has, in effect, enacted an ethical system, suggesting how one might act in such a situation. His strictures, like the Ten Commandments, are negative: thou shalt not act like a Cathcart.

Catch-22, particularly as interpreted with the aid of Burkean terminology and techniques, offers some close parallels with Burke's philosophy of lan guage and of man. I choose to discuss these parallels under two heads: Burke's dramatism and his distinction between action and motion.

"Dramatism," a term Burke coined, developed, and selected as the "god-term" for his system, is defined in Webster's Third New International

Dictionary as "a technique of analysis of language and thought as basically modes of action rather than as means of conveying information." An il lustration of this mode of analysis is the present essay, in which it is as sumed, in the terms of Burke's pentad, that Catch-22 is an act performed by an agent, using certain techniques (agency), in the context of a certain en vironment (scene) for a purpose. Burke assumes that every linguistic act, from comic strips to constitutions, is subject to this form of analysis as sym bolic action. Even non-linguistic acts, such as saluting or sending troops to Vietnam, have their symbolic elements and persuasive effects; material things?medals, uniforms, flags, administrators' desks?also have their symbolic and persuasive overtones. These non-linguistic modes of symbolic action Burke calls "administrative rhetoric." 6 All symbolic acts, linguistic and non-linguistic, are susceptible to dramatistic analysis as "modes of ac tion rather than as means of conveying information."

Throughout Heller's fiction, symbolism, both linguistic and non-lin guistic, is portrayed as a mode of action. As suggested earlier, "god



terms," as used by the Exploiters, are designed, not for conveying informa tion, but for moving men to action and for inducing attitudes of loyalty for those in authority. Letters of condolence sent out over Colonel Cathcart's signature are not designed for the purpose of conveying information or even of expressing sympathy, but for putting Colonel Cathcart's picture on the cover of Saturday Evening Post (pp. 277, 338). Cathcart informs the chap lain that he has selected a dangerous mission over Avignon to hasten the achievement of his purpose: "The sooner we get some casualties, the sooner we can make some progress on this. I'd like to get in the Christmas issue if we can. I imagine the circulation is higher then" (p. 277). Official reports concerning Yossarian's wounding by Nately's whore are not designed to convey information concerning the incident. Two reports are filed: one re

porting that Yossarian was stabbed by a Nazi assassin who was trying to kill Cathcart and Korn, and another report claiming that Yossarian was "stabbed by an innocent girl in the course of extensive blackmarket opera tions involving acts of sabotage and the sale of military secrets to the enemy" (p. 432). These reports are incipient actions, designed to do what ever Cathcart and Korn want them to do.

Non-linguistic "administrative rhetoric" is also portrayed throughout the romance. Uniforms, for example, serve as a mode of symbolic action to en roll men in the group and to induce them to remain loyal to it. Yossarian signals that he is no longer symbolically a member of the group by receiving his medal in the nude. The symbolic value of the uniform is again revealed by its absence during a naked orgy in Rome, where American officers lose both their identity as Americans and their status as officers when their clothes are thrown out the window (pp. 347-348). Burkean "administrative rhetoric" is evident here: in the absence of uniforms, hierarchic

"psychotics" are naked in more ways than one. Yossarian becomes a leader in his opposition to the Exploiters partly be

cause he has become adept in recognizing both linguistic and non-linguistic rhetoric. As a skilled practical analyst of symbolism, he becomes a dan gerous man. As one who declines to reject all symbolism (by accepting the

medal he earned and by fighting for the country as long as it is in danger), Yossarian embodies another Burkean ideal: to live in "fearful apprecia tion" of symbolism. Yossarian lives with "strong misgivings" even about his own ideals.

But Catch-22 provides an even more pervasive and intrinsic exemplifica tion of Burkean philosophy, that founded on Burke's basic distinction be tween action and motion, a distinction on which Burke's entire philosophy is based:

This is the distinction between "action" and "sheer motion." "Action" is a

term for the kind of behavior possible to a typically symbol-using animal (such as man) in contrast with the extrasymbolic or nonsymbolic operations



of nature (rotating of the earth, for instance, or the growth and decay of vege tation).7

In the Burkean perspective, man must perceive things before he can have terms for them, but once these terms (symbols) are formed, they can take on a life of their own, separated from their material referents. Man then tends to elaborate on these terms and to construct symbol systems. Thus Burke

perceives all academic disciplines as elaborations of symbol systems; philosophy, for example, consists of an elaboration of key terms. In his Grammar of Motives Burke has demonstrated this thesis by describing the major philosophies of the western world as a spinning out and elaboration of his pentadic terms: act, agent, agency, purpose, and scene.

Catch-22 is the best example I know of a dramatization of a symbol sys tem taking on a life of its own. We know that symbols do have reverbera tions in physical reality: an idea can make a person or a society sick: witness

psychosomatic disorders; witness Hitler's Germany. In Catch-22 there are also reverberations of the symbol into the world of physical motion, so

much so that the effect is beyond what we can normally accept, a reductio adabsurdum. Some examples:

A man named Major Major Major becomes a major to round out the symmetry of his name (pp. 81-102).

A man named Mudd comes to be thought of?"in Yossarian's own terms?as a dead man in Yossarian's tent":

In reality, he was no such thing. He was simply a replacement pilot who had

been killed in combat before he had officially reported for duty. He had stopped at the operations tent to inquire the way to the orderly room tent and had been sent right into action because so many men had completed the

thirty-five missions required then that Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren were finding it difficult to assemble the number of crews specified by Group. Because he had never officially gotten into the squadron, he could never of

ficially be gotten out, and Sergeant Towser sensed that the multiplying com

munications relating to the poor man would continue reverberating forever,

(p.106) In another instance, men would not have to go on a bombing mission if

Bologna were captured, i.e. if the bomb line on the map moved over

Bologna. "In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over

Bologna" (p. 118). The bombing mission was cancelled. In yet another instance, Nurse Cramer "murders" the soldier in white by

reading the thermometer and reporting him dead: if she had not read the thermometer and reported what she had found, the soldier in white might still be lying there alive exactly as he had been lying there all along, encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze with both strange, rigid legs elevated from the hips and both strange arms strung up per pendicularly, all four bulky limbs in casts, all four strange, useless limbs



hoisted up in the air by taut wire cables and fantastically long lead weights suspended darkly above him. Lying there that way might not have been much of a life, but it was all the life he had, and the decision to terminate it, Yos sarian felt, should hardly have been Nurse Cramer's, (p. 166)

Perhaps the best example of the symbolic realm's dominion over the non

symbolic realm occurs in the case of Doc Daneeka, who was a fatality to ad ministrative classification. Doc, wishing to collect flight pay without the risk of flying, is listed on the flight log of a plane that subsequently crashes, and Doc is not observed parachuting from the plane. Since he is officially aboard and does not escape, he is pronounced officially dead, despite his

protestations to the contrary. His name is removed from the roster of the

squadron, his pay is cut off, and he is not permitted to work. Eventually his

biological death follows his official demise.

Obviously symbolicity is extremely important in Catch-22. An argument can be made that it is about symbolism, since much of the absurdity is di

rectly traceable to a confusion between the symbol and the things sym bolized (or, to use Burke's terms, between action and motion), as well as the web-like symbol systems people create and impose on society.

The symbolic world is also the focal point of Burke's philosophy. He does not probe beneath man's symbol-using capacity to explore traditional ontological concerns of the ultimate nature of reality. Instead, Burke begins with man as symbol-maker: man (an agent) acts on a scene for a purpose using various agencies: the fulfillment of Burke's work is the tracing and

tracking of the action contained in such various symbolic acts as the con

stitution, literary works, folklore, history, popular culture, and advertise ments. Human beings are best studied through their unique productions. Man is grounded in biology, to be sure, but his productions are symbolic; even his material productions, such as architecture and machinery, bear the stamp of the symbolic.

Thus Burke finds himself in a running battle with the behaviorists, who would reduce action to motion. Burke does not, however, take upon him self the burden of arguing whether our apparent acts are ultimately biologi cally determined through the stimulus-response mechanism. It is enough for him that we assume that we act; even the behaviorist makes this assump tion:

... a physical scientist's relation to the materials involved in the study of mo

tion differs in quality from his relation to his colleagues. He would never think of "petitioning" the objects of his experiment, or "arguing with them," as he would with persons whom he asks to collaborate with him or to

judge the results of his experiment. Implicit in these two relations is the dis tinction between the sheer motion of things and the actions of persons. (Ken neth Burke, "Dramatism," p. 337)

For Burke the world that we know is primarily symbolic; elaborating on his definition of man as "the symbol-using animal," he writes:



The "symbol-using animal," yes, obviously. But can we bring ourselves to

realize just what that formula implies, just how overwhelmingly much of what we mean by "reality" has been built up for us through nothing but our

symbol systems? Take away our books, and what little do we know about his

tory, biography, even something so "down to earth" as the relative position of seas and continents? What is our "reality" for today (beyond the paper thin line of our own particular lives) but all this clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, maga

zines, newspapers, and the like about the present? . . . And . . . though man

is typically the symbol-using animal, he clings to a kind of naive verbal realism that refuses to realize the full extent of the role played by symbolicity in his notions of reality. (LSA, p. 5)

Catch-22 is grounded in an understanding of the ideas contained in this passage and in Burkean philosophy generally: that symbolism pervades the life of humanity; that symbols proliferate beyond their referents and be come elaborated into complex systems; and that these systems rule human life. Furthermore, the typical character in Catch-22, whether Exploiter or

Victim, "clings to a kind of naive verbal realism that refuses to realize the full extent of the role played by symbolicity in his notions of reality" (LSA, p. 5). Yossarian alone breaks out of such "naive verbal realism," but with out abandoning symbolism itself. He thus embodies the Burkean ideal of the student and analyst of symbolic action, while the entire anatomy can serve as a dramatization and enactment of Burke's dramatistic philosophy of symbolic action.

For me Catch-22 takes on anew resonance and a deeper meaning when considered in the light of Kenneth Burke's definition of man, which sum

marizes his philosphy: Man is

the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative) separated from his natural condition by instruments

of his own making goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the

sense of order) and rotten with perfection. (LSA, p. 16)

NOTES 1 Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Uni

versity of California Press, 1969), pp. 59-61. This term, explained rather fully in the pages cited, also appears in many other places in Burke's books. Burke uses

terms flexibly, adapting them for his own purposes. I take the same liberty of flexible usage in this paper, in the knowledge that my meanings may vary some

what from Burke's, even while remaining true to his spirit. Terms in quotation marks are Burke's.



2 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 281-283. Burke frequently uses "psychosis" to denote a fixed cast of mind, not necessarily of the abnormal variety. In this sense all human beings have a "hierarchic psychosis," since all can form abstractions. But a "psychosis" in this sense can easily become ab

normal, as exemplified by the Cathcarts of this world. 3 Joseph Heller, Catch-22, A Critical Edition, edited by Robert M. Scotto (New

York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1973), p. 435. Further references will be to this edition.

4 Kenneth Burke, "Literature as Equipment for Living," in The Philosophy of Literary Form, Third Edition (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 293-304; hereafter referred to as PLF.

5 Symbols and Values: An Initial Study, eds. Lyman Bryson, Louis Finkelstein, R. M. Maclver, and Richard McKeon (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), pp. 283-306.

6 "The concept of Administrative Rhetoric involves a theory of persuasive devices which have a directly rhetorical aspect, yet include operations not confined to sheerly verbal persuasion. One example will suffice. It is a variant of what I

would call the *bland' strategy. It goes back to the days when the German Em peror was showing signs of militancy?and Theodore Roosevelt sent our fleet on a

'goodwill mission.' Ostensibly paying the Emperor the compliment of a friendly visit, the President was exemplifying his political precept: 'Speak softly, and carry a big stick.' His 'goodwill' visit was clearly rhetorical insofar as it was

designed blandly to use a display of force as a mode of persuasion" (Language as Symbolic Action [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966], p. 301 ; hereafter referred to as LSA).

1 Kenneth Burke, "Dramatism," in Communication: Concepts and Perspectives, ed. Lee Thayer (Washington: Spartan Books, 1967), p. 335.


Article Contentsp. 42p. 43p. 44p. 45p. 46p. 47p. 48p. 49p. 50p. 51p. 52

Issue Table of ContentsCollege Literature, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter, 1981), pp. i-v, iv, 1-114Front MatterMadame Bovary and Flaubert's Romanticism [pp. 1-11]Margot Macomber's Gimlet [pp. 12-20]Hope and Fear: Tension in "The Waste Land" [pp. 21-32]The Sign of Conrad's Secret Agent [pp. 33-41]A Burkean Approach to "Catch-22" [pp. 42-52]Contradictions and Confirmations in "Ada" [pp. 53-62]Erratum: JFK and Hemingway [p. 62-62]The Death of Lear [pp. 63-70]Teaching Poetry: The Negative Approach [pp. 71-84]Notes and DiscussionTeaching Masterpieces of World Literature: Inauguration of a New MLA Project [pp. 85-87]Under Julia's Petticoat [pp. 88-92]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 93-94]Review: untitled [pp. 94-95]Review: untitled [pp. 95-98]Review: untitled [pp. 98-99]Review: untitled [pp. 99-100]Review: untitled [pp. 100-102]Review: untitled [p. 103-103]Review: untitled [pp. 104-105]Review: untitled [pp. 106-107]Review: untitled [pp. 107-108]Review: untitled [pp. 108-109]Review: untitled [pp. 110-111]Review: untitled [pp. 111-113]

Back Matter

a burkean approach to 'catch-22

Documents