Fight Club Lesson 4

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• Middelbare school
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• Leerjaar 4

Fight Club

Lesson 4

Analysis Chapters 5 & 6

Foreshadowing

In Class Today

Recap & analysis Chapters 5-6

Foreshadowing

In one sentence:

How would you summarise chapter 5?

Analysis Chapter 5

The Narrator has a minor problem (he loses his bag, because the airline thinks it might be a bomb) only to face a major problem: he loses his worldly possessions because of an explosion in his appartment. 

The loss of his possessions forces the Narrator to confront the truth; he was addicted to buying things. In retrospect, the Narrator can see that he’s devoted his life to consumerism—he’s a slave to his own appetite for appliances and furniture, addicted to things.

What company does the Narrator focus on?

Why?

How does the description of this "consumerism" read?

Analysis Chapter 5

In a darkly comic moment, the Narrator seems more upset with the loss of his jars of mustard than with the fact that other people might have been hurt. 

The Narrator is so obsessed with products and appliances that he can only think about products, not people. The passage also foreshadows the police’s investigation into the explosion.

Analysis Chapter 5

The passage ends with Tyler asking the Narrator to hurt him. In a way, Tyler’s desire parallels the Narrator’s need to go to cancer support groups: they both want to experience suffering to jolt themselves out of boredom and experience something “real.” 

The Narrator has been experiencing suffering vicariously through suffering people, Tyler wants to feel actual, physical pain.

In one sentence:

How would you summarise chapter 6?

What are the rules of Fight Club?

Analysis Chapter 6

We’ve flashed ahead a few weeks, and the Narrator has already changed his life greatly.  He now attends a “fight club” where he gets injured on a regular basis. The club is extremely secret, given that there’s a rule against speaking about it. 

Fight club is a secret group in which members fight each other. During fight club, members become different people—then the fight club concludes, and they go back to their regular lives.

Why do these men attend Fight Club?

What are they looking for?

Analysis Chapter 6

These men presumably embrace fighting because it’s an escape from their daily lives and dull jobs. Fighting seems to be a way to celebrate masculinit, in a way that modern society does not, which is understood as being in touch with one’s aggressive instincts and physical strength.

Analysis Chapter 6

Fighting is an outlet for pent-up emotions; because the Narrator lives in a highly repressed society, he has a lot of emotions bottled up. Where the rest of society celebrates beautification and vacuous self-improvement, the Narrator just wants to hurt himself. 

Self-destruction, he believes, is the answer to his problems.

Fight club becomes so popular because of its immediacy and visceral qualities: next to fight club, regular life feels like a lazy daydream.

Analysis Chapter 6

The Narrator and Tyler use fighting to get over their “demons” and deep-seated anxieties: Tyler, for example, admits that he’s trying to get back at his father by hitting the Narrator. 

This suggests that the fight club is designed to fill a “vacuum” in society—it’s designed to appeal to lonely, alienated men who don’t have any real outlet for their anger, frustration, and desire for visceral experience.

Analysis Chapter 6

The Narrator’s embrace of his own pain and suffering cause pain and discomfort in other people (those who are still blinded by their bland consumerist lifestyle, it’s implied). 

The Narrator seems to enjoy causing Walter so much anxiety: the Narrator’s ability to accept pain and even hurt himself gives him tremendous power to control and intimidate others.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing often appears at the beginning of a story, or a chapter, and helps the reader develop expectations about the coming events in a story. There are various ways to create foreshadowing.

What do you suspect will happen later in the novel?

Homework

Finish reading up to and including chapter 12

(Monday 7-9, Friday 10-12)

Write a one sentence summary of each chapter.