Fight Club Lesson 11

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 4

Fight Club

In Class Today

Analysis 

Analysis

5 Themes 

1.  Consumerism, Perfection and Modernity
   
2.  Masculinity in Modern Society
3.  Death, Pain and the " Real" 
4.  Rebellion and Sacrifice
5.  Repression and the Unconscious Mind

Consumerism, Perfection and Modernity

In order to understand what motivates the characters of Fight Club, we have to understand what they’re fighting against. Overall, much of the novel’s project involves satirizing modern American life, particularly what the novel sees as the American obsession with consumerism and the mindless purchasing of products.

Another important aspect of modern American life, as the novel portrays it, is the emphasis on beauty and perfection, whether in a human body or in something like an apartment.

Consumerism, Perfection and Modernity

In contrast to consumerism, the novel depicts traditional sources of fulfillment and pleasure, such as family and religion, as either nonexistent or fragmented. The Narrator barely knows or speaks to his father, and none of the characters in the novel are presented as believing in God—the implication being that consumerism has become America’s new “religion”. In structuring their lives around transient, superficial pleasures like the purchasing of products, consumers deny themselves any deeper emotional or spiritual satisfaction—a vacuum that Tyler’s fight club (and then Project Mayhem) attempts to fill.

Masculinity in Modern Society

Nearly all the characters in Fight Club are men (the one notable exception is Marla Singer), and the novel examines the state of masculinity in modern times.

Masculinity in Modern Society

The novel suggests that modern society emasculates men by forcing them to live consumerist lives centered around shopping, clothing, and physical beauty. The novel further suggests that such traits are necessarily effeminate, and therefore that because American society prizes these things it represses the aspects of men that make men, men. In short, the novel depicts the men it portrays as being so emasculated they’ve forgotten what being a “real man” means.

Masculinity in Modern Society

Fight club emerges as a reaction to this state of affairs, with the purpose of allowing men to rediscover their raw masculinity. But what, according to Fight Club, is masculinity? Based on the philosophy of the fight clubs themselves, being a masculine, “real” man means being willing to feel pain, and dole pain out to other people. For Tyler Durden (and perhaps Palahniuk as well) masculinity is, above all, a physical state: an awareness of one’s body, and a willingness to use one’s body to satisfy deep, aggressive needs. As such, the fight clubs offer the men a thrilling sense of life that the rest of their existence sorely lacks.

Masculinity in Modern Society

While the members of fight club and Project Mayhem dismiss women and femininity altogether, toward the end of the book the Narrator goes to Marla for help while fighting Tyler and Project Mayhem. Perhaps, through the Narrator’s alliance with Marla, Palahniuk is trying to suggest that the answer to society’s problems (perceived effeminateness) isn’t to “swing back” in the opposite direction and be hyper-masculine, but to embrace some values that are stereotypically masculine (such as strength) and some that are more stereotypically feminine (such as compassion)—values that in fact aren’t masculine or feminine, but simply human.

Death, Pain and the "Real"

Most of the characters in Fight Club, including the Narrator and Tyler, are attracted to pain and fighting—on the most immediate level, they go to fight club in order to hurt themselves, as well as each other, and most of the characters are obsessed with death. In large part, the novel’s characters behave masochistically because they consider death and pain to be more “real” than the lives they lead outside the fight club. But how does the novel define the “real?”

Death, Pain and the "Real"

As the novel portrays it, the Narrator and millions of other people like him live meaningless, superficial lives, dominated by purchasing goods. By starting the fight club (and visiting cancer support groups before that), the Narrator and Tyler are trying to exist “in the moment”—they want to feel pain in order to move closer to a visceral, physical world that they cannot access in the course of their ordinary lives. 

Death, Pain and the "Real"

The relationship between death, pain, and reality is summed up by Marla Singer, who tells the Narrator that she wants to get as close as possible to death without actually dying. The goal of the fight club, then, is to bring its members closer and closer to death in order to get them to truly embrace life—that’s why Tyler pours lye on his recruits’ hands, urges his recruits to get in fights and lose, and sends them on dangerous missions—to feel pain, to experience fear and danger, and in so doing to feel the thrill of life.

Rebellion and Sacrifice

Fight Club is a story of rebellion: frustrated, emasculated men rebelling against what they perceive as an unjust, effeminized society that forces them to live dull and meaningless lives.

Rebellion and Sacrifice

At first, Tyler, the Narrator, and their followers at fight club “rebel” in an individual, relatively self-contained way: they fight with each other in order to inject masculinity into own lives. By beating each other up, the members of fight club give up their own complacency and safety for the sake of pain and “realness,” proving to themselves that they’re not slaves to consumerist society and a culture of shallow comfort. In this case, the members of fight club are “rebelling” against their society by escaping from it. They’re not trying to fight that society directly.

Repression and the Unconscious Mind

One of the most famous elements of Fight Club is the “twist” ending: the Narrator and Tyler Durden, seemingly two different characters, are actually just two sides of the same person. The narrator, dissatisfied with his dull, consumerist life, gradually and unknowingly imagines Tyler, his alter ego, in order to escape reality: Tyler is the person the Narrator would be if he could get over his own inhibitions (Tyler is confident, daring, aggressive, charming, etc.).

Repression and the Unconscious Mind

While Tyler is the projection of the Narrator’s unconscious mind, his creation is also a result of the surrounding culture of consumerism and materialism that forces the Narrator to live a sheltered, repressed existence. His unconscious “masculine” thoughts therefore have no outlet - they build up, develop a personality of their own, and eventually come “alive.” In a way, the repression implicit in modern society creates Tyler. In this way, Palahniuk suggests that the Narrator’s desire for escape, and therefore the creation of his alter ego, are necessary reactions to the conditions of contemporary American life.