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Notes -
I think the point of Catch-22 is that as hilarious as it is underlying the humor is a tragedy revealing the horrors of war. At first, it's just funny but in the second half, we start to really see the tragic consequences of the absurdity. There are just outright dark scenes like Snowden's death where Yossarian desperately tries to save a dying man's life but is unable to do anything and has to watch Snowden's organs drip out after he is hit by flak.
Then there are the humorous parts that come hand-in-hand with the tragedy.
For example, there is a scene where Yossarian is making love to Nurse Duckett at the beach and it's quite a dreamy and beautiful moment, people are out and about enjoying themselves in this moment of tranquility during the war, only for it to cut short by the death Kid Sampson.
What killed him? McWatt had been "buzzing" the beach as a joke for a while earlier in the chapter trying to scare people by flying his plane dangerously close to the ground. Except this time, he fucks up and actually does kill someone. And in response, he chooses to crash his plane into the mountain killing him. The people watching can't make sense of it, they watched a comrade die and can't do anything but watch the other choose to kill himself as well. The two newbie pilots on the plane with McWatt jump out via parachute, indicating they too failed to convince him otherwise.
This scene is immediately ended with this gem of a line:
And then this line in the immediate chapter afterward:
I think that would count as dark humor.
After typing this all out, I just realized where your flair comes from. Somehow I haven't made the connection despite seeing it several times.
And the whole tragedy of Doc Daneeka trying to explain that he isn't actually dead definitely counts as dark humor. Especially when his own wife would rather keep the money paid to war widows than prove his existence.
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Yes, it's a good point. I thought of the grim sections as an alternating contrast to the humorous ones, but you're right of course that they do overlap as well.
Ironically, the author didn't seem to mind his wartime experience too much, rather thinking of the Korean war while writing the book.
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