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How does Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 use farce to criticize war and bureaucracy?

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Take a look at George Bernard Shaw speaking on the marvels of Movietone — satire George Bernard Shaw speaking about the novelty of technology; excerpt from a Hearst Metrotone newsreel (c. 1930). (29 sec; 2.6 MB)

In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, farce serves as a powerful vehicle to expose the dehumanizing nature of war and the absurdity of bureaucratic systems. By employing a style that is hilariously grotesque and bizarre, Heller critiques a world where rational norms have been inverted, forcing the reader to question who is truly sane in a society dedicated to self-destruction.12

The novel’s titular "catch" is the ultimate expression of this bureaucratic farce: a circular, inescapable paradox where the military’s own rules deny a pilot’s request to be grounded based on his own sanity. This logic is not merely a plot device but a reflection of a dehumanized environment defined by greed, hypocrisy, and institutional cant.312

Through these farcical maneuvers, Heller strips away the veneer of military heroism, replacing it with a reality where characters perform lethal assignments with the absurdity of a comedy routine. Ultimately, the laughter elicited by the novel’s mad logic acts as a pedagogical tool; as the reader laughs at the absurdity, they are confronted with the deadly serious reality of the systems being satirized.12