That Sounds More Like Something Aarfy Would Do: Conflicting Portrayals of Sexual Assault in Catch-22 and Something Happened
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 contains a troubling moment where Yossarian sexually assaults Nurse Duckett in the hospital. The scene, however, contrasts with Heller’s clearer condemnations of assault elsewhere in the novel, particularly the rapes in the Eternal City and Aarfy’s escape from punishment. He...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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European Association for American Studies
2021-07-01
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| Series: | European Journal of American Studies |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/16924 |
| Summary: | Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 contains a troubling moment where Yossarian sexually assaults Nurse Duckett in the hospital. The scene, however, contrasts with Heller’s clearer condemnations of assault elsewhere in the novel, particularly the rapes in the Eternal City and Aarfy’s escape from punishment. Heller builds on this thematic use of assault in Something Happened by having Virginia Markowitz, a rape victim, exhibit more complex symptoms of rape trauma. These more successful treatments of assault as an embodiment of power abuse suggest that the Nurse Duckett assault should be viewed as a conflicting outlier of the assaults Heller elsewhere condemns. |
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| ISSN: | 1991-9336 |