War Satire as Tragedy: Redemptive Genres for Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five

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dc.contributor.advisorKlett, Elizabeth
dc.contributor.committeeMemberWhite, Craig
dc.creatorLivingston, Caryn Leshay
dc.creator.orcid0000-0001-9890-999X
dc.date.accessioned2018-06-25T19:06:09Z
dc.date.available2018-06-25T19:06:09Z
dc.date.created2018-05
dc.date.issued2018-05-16
dc.date.submittedMay 2018
dc.date.updated2018-06-25T19:06:09Z
dc.description.abstractAthenian tragedy, despite the suffering it depicts, is theorized to offer emotional relief through its power to deliver a cathartic experience. The three plays forming Aeschylus's Oresteia show the majestic suffering of noble men and women but eventually offer redemption from the cycle of violence through advancement in civilization and jurisprudence. More than two millennia later, however, the monumental event known as World War II unleashed suffering on such a massive plane that the nobility and grandeur of tragedy, in the Athenian sense, fall short of depicting the scale of human suffering and allowing for the same catharsis found in Athenian tragedy. Later in the twentieth century, novelists Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, who both fought in the war, found a new genre--satire with black humor--for expressing and coping with the traumatic war without unnecessarily ennobling it in the vein of Athenian tragedy. Their respective novels, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Catch-22 (1961), offer redemption for tragedy by approaching the serious subject of the unprecedented, globally destructive World War II in a counter-intuitive and even amusing way, thus reinforcing the horror of the war without cloaking it with the majesty associated with tragedy.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10657.1/1016
dc.language.isoen
dc.subject.lcshAeschylus--Oresteia
dc.subject.lcshVonnegut, Kurt--Slaughterhouse-five
dc.subject.lcshHeller, Joseph--Catch-22
dc.subject.lcshBlack humor
dc.titleWar Satire as Tragedy: Redemptive Genres for Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five
dc.typeThesis
dc.type.materialtext
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston-Clear Lake
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts

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