Catch-22

by Joseph Heller

Catch-22: Situational Irony 1 key example

Chapter 3: Havermeyer
Explanation and Analysis—Started from the Top:

When the narrator introduces Colonel Cargill to the reader, his description is one of the earliest, and most extensive, uses of Heller's characteristic ironic style. The verbal irony is extensive:

His services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. [...] He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.