precise machine. This reflects society's insane obsession with order and conformity, even at the cost of individuality and humanity. A further example of such dehumanizing absurdity occurs at the hospital. Yossarian has suffered a leg injury and is told to take better care of his leg because it is government property. Soldiers, therefore, are not even people, but simply property that can be listed on an inventory. In a bureaucracy, as Heller shows, individuality does …showed first 75 words of 431 total…

…showed last 75 words of 431 total…of comedy and tragedy in the entire novel. Though seemingly irreconcilable genres, horror and tragedy are nimbly fused into a whole creation by Heller's unique style and structure. Heller creates situations where the audience laughs, and then must look back in horror at what they were laughing at. Through brilliant characterizations, superb irony, mind-boggling paradoxes, and ingenious absurdity, Heller manages interlay humor and terror, comedy and tragedy into a beautiful whole as Catch-22. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**