Mapping the Polyphony in Joseph Heller's Fiction: A Select Study

Joseph Heller is remembered as a popular and respected writer of the Post- World War II era. He has not only shown an imaginative response to the socio-cultural events and upheavals of the postwar decade but also to the innovation and techniques that mark the contemporary, postmodern period. Heller's novels may strike one as so different from each other that they hardly seem to be written by the same pen. The protagonists - a rebellious soldier, a depressed corporate executive, a cynical college professor - could hardly be less alike in personality, role, or milieu. Yet a closer examination of Heller's novels reveals that all spring from a unified world view, that is one that looks critically at American institutions and values and satirizes what it sees: a society, in which the institutional forces of order create chaos, destroying human lives, liberty, identity, and values. The present work also deals with the concept of polyphony propounded by Mikhail Bakhtin. An examination of Catch-22, Something Happened and Good as Gold, portrays the features of polyphony in the countless shades and colors of the life.