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Catch-22 Part 5: Fear 1357 Views


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Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:05

Catch-22

00:06

a la Shmoop

00:07

Nothing to fear but flak itself.

00:10

The word "suspense" gets thrown around a lot,

00:13

especially in Hollywood,

00:14

but it's actually a pretty specific term

00:16

for what we mean by suspense.

00:18

It's all about the anticipation of fear.

00:21

I think that'd be a good textbook definition.

00:23

It's about knowing something's gonna happen,

00:26

not about the unknown.

00:27

Give us some examples

00:29

for how suspense takes place in Catch-22,

00:32

particularly in the context of

00:34

the humorous background and the little hints that we're given

00:37

that there's really bad stuff on the rise.

00:40

Absolutely. So the way

00:42

that Heller structures the novel

00:45

is so disjointed that

00:47

we hear little snippets of things

00:50

before we know what they are.

00:52

And that's what we're talking about when we say

00:55

it's not the fear of the unknown, it's the fear of the known.

00:58

We know something's coming;

01:00

we just don't know what it is.

01:02

For instance, we hear about the siege of Bologna,

01:06

which is this big battle,

01:08

long before it happens.

01:10

And we can kind of feel the tension building up.

01:12

And of course, it's done in a humorous way.

01:14

We can really feel that tension building up

01:15

and we know that something big is about to happen.

01:17

And we get snippets of it,

01:18

but we're just waiting. And, again, it's that word,

01:21

that anticipation that makes us crazy.

01:24

And it inspires a kind of terror in us,

01:29

which is that dark underbelly

01:31

of the humor of the novel.

01:32

Other things -- We see references to the soldier in white,

01:36

who's wrapped in bandages.

01:37

All these things, but just the general disjointed nature of the novel

01:41

makes that happen.

01:42

And clearly that's an intentional choice by Heller.

01:45

He could have just told the novel linearly -

01:47

and we'll get into that a little bit later -

01:49

but instead he chooses to increase the tension and the suspense

01:53

by just giving us a little bit at a time.

01:55

Got it. Okay.

01:57

[ angelic harmony ]

02:00

How does the disjointed structure of Catch-22 increase the sense of fear in the reader?

02:07

[ angelic harmony ]

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