Trauma, Symptoms and Healing: Trauma Writing in Catch-22
Abstract
Catch-22 is a masterpiece of American writer Joseph Heller’s “black humor” literature. By portraying Yossarian as an “anti-hero” and describing his struggle to heal the trauma of war, Heller exposes the fact that war is the greatest human tragedy. The “death” throughout the novel is Heller’s memory of brutal war, which also highlights the theme of war trauma. Based on the theories of trauma research, this paper analyzes the trauma manifestation and healing of the hero Yossarian and the author Joseph Heller, refecting the horrors of war and its great trauma to human mental state.
Keywords
Catch-22; Yossarian; Trauma of War; the Healing of Trauma
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18686/ahe.v6i35.11601
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