Fight Club Lesson 8

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Fight Club

Lesson 8

In Class Today

Summary & Analysis Chapter 18-21

Plot

Chapter 18 - Summary

The narrator falls asleep at work on a Friday night. When he wakes he is unsure whether he is dreaming. He's in trouble at work; his boss has told him to prepare for a review. 

When he wakes up, he smells gasoline on his hands. Before he can think about this further, he gets a phone call from Tyler, telling him that Project Mayhem is waiting outside for him with a car. 

Chapter 18 - Summary

The narrator's hands smell like gasoline. A mechanic who belongs to fight club has driven up in a stolen luxury car. There is a birthday cake in the car. While the mechanic drives, he and other fight club members recite fight club philosophy, or "Tyler Durden dogma," as the narrator calls it. 

On a two-lane highway, the mechanic repeatedly veers into oncoming traffic, playing chicken. While facing an oncoming car, the mechanic has the passengers yell out their true desires. The narrator wishes he had quit his job.

Chapter 18 - Analysis

In this chapter, Tyler tries once again to push The Narrator to “rock bottom.” The mechanic, acting as Tyler’s proxy, is trying to frighten and unsettle the Narrator by “almost” crashing the car. While Tyler isn’t present in the car, his influence pervades the entire scene: the “space monkeys” are doing Tyler’s bidding unthinkingly. While the purpose of fight club was to help members immediately get in touch with their “real,” visceral selves through violence, Project Mayhem involves surrendering one’s own personality and individuality to suit Tyler’s plans—plans which he never seems to explain.

Chapter 19 - Summary

Later that same night the narrator, the mechanic, and three other fight club members go on a mission. They plan to steal human fat from a medical waste dump. 

The narrator wants to know what Tyler is planning, but no one tells him. The mechanic says he had to make four "human sacrifices" as part of this week's homework, but the narrator doesn't ask him to explain.

Chapter 19 - Summary

On the way to the waste dump the mechanic talks and talks, "and it's pure Tyler Durden." 

The mechanic points out "the smartest and strongest men who have ever lived" are stuck in service jobs, "pumping gas and waiting tables." This generation needs a "war of the spirit," and "we" can free "these men and women" by enslaving them. The mechanic asks the narrator to imagine going on strike "until the wealth of the world is redistributed."

Chapter 19 - Analysis

The mechanic is a pawn for Tyler’s wishes: he has no true personality of his own anymore, showing how Project Mayhem has gotten out of hand and undercut its own anarchist, individualistic ideals.

Chapter 20 - Summary

The narrator holds a gun to the head of Raymond K. Hessel, a stranger. Tyler has assigned this homework to Project Mayhem; everyone has to bring him 12 driver's licenses as proof of 12 "human sacrifices." 

Raymond cries; the narrator forces him to reveal what he once wanted to do with his life. Raymond says he wanted to be a veterinarian. The narrator keeps Raymond's driver's license. He tells Raymond he must quit his job and study to be a vet; if he doesn't, the narrator will come back and kill him, he says.

Chapter 20 - Analysis

In this short chapter, even the Narrator becomes Tyler’s pawn.  

The Narrator’s goal, it would seem, is to inspire Raymond to be a better person, since the Narrator believes that being close to death and pain can lead to enlightenment. Even though the Narrator knows how painful and frightening a brush with death can be (he’s just had one), he still “passes on his lesson” to Raymond. The fact that the Narrator lets Raymond live, yet also thinks that he’s doing Tyler’s bidding, suggests that Tyler does not to want his followers to sacrifice people literally (i.e., kill them); Tyler wants them to pass on the lessons of Project Mayhem and essentially torture people into enlightenment.

Chapter 21 - Summary

The narrator flies from city to city on business. Everywhere he goes he sees bruised men he can tell are in fight club. He asks them about Tyler. They respond strangely; they wink at him and call him "sir." The narrator calls Marla from the road; she tells him the space monkeys at Paper Street are shaving their heads and burning off their fingerprints.

Chapter 21 - Summary

At a bar in Seattle, the Narrator meets a bartender with a broken nose who calls him “Sir.” The Narrator asks the bartender if he’s met Tyler Durden before, and the bartender insists, “You stopped in last week, Mr. Durden.” The bartender shows the Narrator the “Tyler’s kiss” on his (the bartender’s) hand and claims, “you’re turning into a fucking legend, man.” 

Chapter 21 - Analysis

Again, the Narrator feels the uncanny sense that he’s been to the bars before—the truth of his unconscious activities is coming closer to being revealed.

Chapter 21 - Summary

The Narrator calls Marla from Seattle and asks her if they’ve ever had sex. Marla is confused—of course they have. She thanks the Narrator for saving her life in the hotel, and says she’s still angry with him for making her mother into soap. Stunned, the Narrator asks Marla to say his name—she says, “Tyler Durden,” the person who gave her the scar on her hand.

Chapter 21 - Analysis

Here, we come to the famous “twist” in the novel’s plot: the Narrator and Tyler are really the same person.

How to write a 5-paragraph essay

• The introduction sets the structure for the rest of the essay, with the first sentence being the hook sentence. The hook sentence is kind of like the spark to a flame. It grabs the reader's attention. Give some background information and write your thesis statement.
  
• The body is the “meat” of your 5 paragraph essay, where you explain the position you are defending. In other words, it has to relate to your thesis sentence. The structure of a body paragraph is usually: Intro sentence (1), Supporting Argument Explanation (3-5), Concluding Sentence (1). The intro sentence should briefly bring about your argument, without revealing too much information.
  
• The conclusion should include: A rewritten thesis statement, using your own new, original language and interpretation — do not merely copy-paste the thesis; A summary of the three major points from the paper’s body; A closing statement that alarms the reader that the discussion is about to be over.
  

Plot

Plot is a literary element that describes the structure of a story. It shows the causal arrangement of events and actions within a story. 

Most great stories, whether they are a Pixar film or a novel by your favorite author, follow a certain dramatic structure. According to Freitag, these stories can be broken down into five elements, usually including exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution or denouement.

Exposition. 

This is a set of scenes in which no major changes occur and the point is to introduce the principal characters, time period, and tone, and set up the “exciting force.”

Exciting Force. 

Freytag also calls this the “complication,” and other frameworks call it the “inciting incident,” when some force of will on the part of the protagonist or an outside complication forces the protagonist into motion.

Rising Action.

Now that the chief action has been started, this continues the movement toward the climax. Any characters who have not as of yet been introduced should be introduced here.

Climax.

In Freytag’s framework, the climax occurs in the middle of the story.

In this framework, the climax can be thought of as a reflection point. If things have gone well for the protagonist, at the climax they start to fall apart tragically.

Or in a comedy, if things have been going poorly for the protagonist, things start improving.

After the climax, whatever ambition the protagonist showed is reversed against himself, and whatever suffering she endured is redeemed. In other words, the energy, values, and themes shown in the first half are reversed and undone in the second half.

Falling action.

Things continue to either devolve for the protagonist or, in the case of a comedy, improve, leading up to the “force of the final suspense,” a moment before the catastrophe, when the author projects the final catastrophe and prepares the audience for it. As Freytag says, “It is well understood that the catastrophe must not come entirely as a surprise to the audience.”

But just after this foreshadowing, there must be a moment of suspense where the slim possibility of reversal is hinted at.

Resolution.

Freytag was chiefly focused on tragedy, not comedy, and he saw the ending phase of a story as the moment of catastrophe, in which the character is finally undone by their own choices, actions, and energy.

Freytag's Pyramid

Can you fill in Freytag's pyramid for Fight Club? 

Homework

Read Chapters 22-25 and fill in Freytag's Pyramid