When people hear the words war, death, mental health, and pain, the last thing you'd probably think of is satire. However in the book Catch 22, author Joseph Heller uses satire to bring light to all of these topics, highlight the characters' flaws, and provide comic relief. Heller revolves his book around satire, in a time when no one really used, or even knew, what satire was. Heller's writings introduced readers to a new way of expressing humor, while also shedding light on the tragedies of war and changing people's ideas about how they view war. Satire is truly an amazing literary element that was used perfectly in the book Catch 22. Heller will forever change the way Americans view war, government, and as time goes by it will slowly change people's understanding and appreciation for satire in literature and still continues to do so. even to this day. The lessons and messages of Catch-22 are still used and are relevant today, it's truly remarkable the insight and knowledge Heller had about the world even before everyone else realized these things. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayAlthough satire and dark humor may be somewhat common in today's society, at the time of Catch 22's release they were seen as crass and immature. Writer Whitney Balliett writing for the New Yorker described this style of comedy by saying, “Heller uses silliness, satire, non sequiturs, slap-stick and farce. He wallows in his own laughter and drowns in it. What remains is the debris of bitter jokes, stage rage, dirty words, synthetic madness, and the kind of funny behavior that children fall into when they know they are losing our attention. It's clear that at the time most people saw Heller's comedic form as a bad attention grabber, rather than what it actually was; showing the dark ways we humans use to deal with dark times as Yossarian does in the book to belittle and minimize how bad war is. The humor in the book is not the safe PG comedy that people were used to at the time, it was hard, crude, coded humor with hidden messages and motivations behind every joke. However, with time and the evolution of comedy, people have come to appreciate Heller's genius, comedy today has evolved greatly in the last 50+ years since the release of Catch 22. Humor is subjective and this what the masses find funny is constantly evolving and changing, what people find funny will never stay the same and there will never be one thing that everyone will find funny. Catch 22 was undoubtedly ahead of its time. People were disgusted by crude humor and didn't care enough to find the deeper meaning and loneliness behind the humor. The book is also very anti-war, nowadays most people are actually against war and while people at the time of Catch 22's release didn't necessarily want to go to war, there was definitely a different culture in pride and in the passion of people. for our military than we have today. This is a big reason why as time goes on, the book becomes more and more popular and the messages it has hidden before our faces ring more and more true. Just looking at one of the earlier reviews mentioned above compared to a quote from a more recent 2011 review by Chris Cox for The Guardian, there is a notable difference in understanding humor and satire. Cox says, “The power of Catch 22, to me, is how.