Fight Club

Ashley Gibson
Prof. Matt Falloon
English 300
14 November, 2011
Fight Club The book “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk was about a man whose name was never revealed and his friend Tyler Durden. Tyler believes in destroying the norm of society and taking down “the man.” He does that by creating what he called Fight Club. When you go to Fight Club you sign up to fight another person until one person gives up. After a while Fight Club became more and more recognized and more started to open up. Tyler decided to take Fight Club to a higher level by creating Project Mayhem. He hired what they called in the book “monkeys” to go around town to complete what Tyler called homework assignments, which consisted of going around and causing mayhem. By the end of to book the protagonist realized that Tyler was actually his split personality and the book ends by him trying to kill Tyler. This book in a lot of ways can be related to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Marx’s Marxist Criticism. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories are a huge contribution to psychology today. His theories are referred back to and studied even today. The word psychoanalysis is used to refer to many aspects of Freud’s work and research, including Freudian therapy and the research methodology he used to develop his theories (Cherry). There are four main ideas the he had that relate back to the book “Fight Club” the origins of the unconscious, the defenses, the meaning of death, and the meaning of sexuality. The first one discusses the unconscious which is the psychological history that begins with childhood experiences in the family. According to Lois Tyson “The unconscious is the storehouse of those painful experiences, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them” (Tyson 15). This relates to the book Fight Club because the protagonist stated that he had family problems growing up with his father abandoning him. The protagonist says “Me, I knew my dad for about six years, but I don’t remember anything. My dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years. This isn’t so much like a family as it’s like he sets up a franchise” (Palahniuk 50). This directly relates to Freud’s theory because the protagonist the entire book never discusses his problems with his father. He buries it in his unconscious and rarely talks about it throughout the book.
The second idea is what Freud called the defenses, which is our unconscious desire not to recognize the problems we have in our lives. The first defense that is discussed is selective perception, which is hearing and seeing only what we feel we can handle. This relates to the book because throughout the entire book the protagonist believes that Tyler Durden is a separate person. Tyler is the person who does all of the bad things in the book, the protagonist doesn’t wish to see that until the end of the book and that’s when he decides to change things and make them right. The second type of defense is denial, this relates to the book in numerous ways. The first and biggest being the fact that the protagonist was indeed Tyler Durden and that he wasn’t a separate person. In the book the protagonist kept saying that he was asleep that it wasn’t true and that he needed to wake up. The other way the protagonist was in denial was that he loved Marla. For the majority of the book the protagonist talks about how much he hates Marla but then towards the end of the book he finally comes out and says that he’s in love. His denial for his love for Marla is also a fear of intimacy as well due to his childhood issues with his father (Tyson 18).
The third idea in Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory is the meaning of death. This one plays a huge role in the book because the entire idea for Tyler Durden to create Fight Club was to do something extraordinary before he and the protagonist died. The protagonist said, “I didn’t want to, but Tyler explained it all, about not wanting to die without any scars, about being tired of watching only professionals fight, and wanting to know more about himself” (Palahniuk 52). Freud also discusses that all people have what he calls a death drive, which is “self-destructive behavior he saw both in individuals, who seemed bent on destroying themselves psychologically and physically” (Tyson 24). The entire initial idea of Fight Club was to not die without scars and in doing that they displayed a lot of self-destructive behaviors when getting into fights and then later completing one of Tyler’s homework assignments for Project Mayhem.
The last idea that Freud had was the meaning of sexuality. In this section Freud talks about the ego, the super ego, and the id. The ego is the conscious self that experiences the external world through senses, play, and referee between the id and the superego. The superego is the one that follows society’s rules and definitions concerning sexuality. It’s the social values and taboos that we internalize and experience as our sense of right and wrong. The id is the psychological reservoir of our instincts and our sexual energy. The id is devoted to the gratification of prohibited desires such as the desire for power, sex, and amusement without thinking about the consequences (Tyson 27).
In Fight Club the id is Tyler Durden. He is the evil side to the protagonist and is the one who created Fight Club and Project Mayhem. He never thought about the consequences all he wanted was the power over the “monkeys” and the protagonist to do his dirty work. He was also the one who blew up the protagonist’s condo, the idea to use fat from people and sell them back to the rich; it was also his idea to pee in the food at the hotel. He did all of those things to stick it to the rich. The superego is the protagonist, because even though he did all the things Tyler asked him to do he still knew what was right and what was wrong. The ego didn’t show up until the end of the book. Marla became the ego when the protagonist asked her to keep an eye on him when he was asleep, because when he was asleep Tyler took over. So during the last couple chapters of the book Marla played referee to the id and the superego.
Fight Club was not only related to Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory but the Karl Marx Marxist theory as well. Marxist theory basically states that classism isn’t going to work. There are 5 groups in the class system of America, the underclass, lower class, middle class, upper class, and aristocracy. The underclass are the homeless who have literally nothing, the lower class are the poor who have a little but barely make it, the middle class own a house and are able to send their kids to college. The upper-class has a very nice house and nice luxury cars and don’t have to worry about anything, and then there is the aristocracy who are really rich and probably won’t even spend all the money they have. Tyson states that the economically oppressed should fight back against the rich.
Fight Club was all about fighting back against the rich. Tyler Durden believed the same thing that Marx believed, that the class system was ridiculous, that the rich should be taxed more to help out the poor. Throughout the book Tyler constantly did things to stick it to the poor. The main thing was his soap business. He took the cellulite from the rich after they had liposuction and put it into his soap and then sold it back to the rich for twenty bucks. He made a fortune off of ripping off the rich. He also worked in a hotel that catered to the rich and constantly put stuff in there food and peed in there food to get back at them. He also told women that he peed in her perfume and she went crazy over it. That was the main reason for fight club though, to teach the rich a lesson.
Marx also believed in the role of ideology. An ideology “is a belief system, that is, a product of cultural conditioning” (Tyson 52). Ideology itself represents the "production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness," all that "men say, imagine, conceive," and include such things as "politics, laws, morality, religion, and metaphysics” (Felluga). Marx stated that the biggest ideology was that “it’s natural for men to hold leadership positions because their biological superiority renders them more physically, intellectually, and emotionally capable then women” (Tyson 53). This relates to Fight Club because only men were allowed into Fight Club which is obvious because women can’t fight men, but women were also not allowed in Project Mayhem. Tyler also always complained about Marla being annoying and always getting in the way.
Marx also states that the middle class tends to resent the poor because a lot of the middle class tax money goes to government programs for the poor. He states that the middle class should realize that the wealthy is in the position of power who decides who pays the most taxes and how the money is spent. Tyler figured that out and that was one of the reasons he went after the rich in the first place. He wanted the rich to be taxed more to make all the classes even so that no one would suffer and no one would be higher than anyone else. These theories assert that all of human action is predicated on economics and that class struggle will inevitably lead to the triumph of communism over capitalism. “The heavy influence that Marx clearly had on Tyler is evident throughout the entire book and, despite the problematic Project Mayhem; it is the driving force behind many of Tyler’s ideas” (Religiousthought.com). Tyler expands on Marx’s argument of consumerism and adjusts the unit of analysis from class to gender, but the basic premise stays the same. Marx would also agree with Tyler when he says that the middle class are “slaves with white collar” (Religiousthought.com). Tyler throughout the entire book related back to Marx’s theory.
Fight Club was almost all related back to either Freud’s psychoanalytic theory or Marx’s theory or both. Everything that Tyler did in the book was all for what Marx believed in and that everything about the protagonist was about Freud’s theory. The book was very good and enjoyable to read and after reading Marxist Criticism and Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory the book becomes way more understandable. It’s almost like you can relate more to the characters after knowing what they believe in. It’s like you can relate to Tyler Durden and maybe even come to respect him after finding out what he believed in. All he wanted was for the class system of America to come crashing down and he wanted to stick it to the rich. The book became easier to follow as well after really analyzing it. In a lot of ways Fight Club related back to Marx’s theory and Freud’s theory if not even written around those theories.

Works Cited
Cherry, Kendra. "Psychoanalytic Theory - The Conscious and Unconscious Mind."Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators & Enthusiasts. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/consciousuncon.htm>.
Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Marx: On Ideology." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U. 14 Nov. 2011 <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/marxism/modules/marxideology.html>.
"Is Tyler Durden a Marxist?" Religiousthought.com. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. <http://www.religiousthought.com/papers/durdenmarxist.pdf>.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2005. Print.
"Is Tyler Durden a Marxist?" Religiousthought.com. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. <http://www.religiousthought.com/papers/durdenmarxist.pdf>.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-friendly Guide. New York [etc.: Garland, 1999. Print.

Cited: Cherry, Kendra. "Psychoanalytic Theory - The Conscious and Unconscious Mind."Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators &amp; Enthusiasts. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. &lt;http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/consciousuncon.htm&gt;. Felluga, Dino. "Modules on Marx: On Ideology." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. Purdue U. 14 Nov. 2011 &lt;http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/marxism/modules/marxideology.html&gt;. "Is Tyler Durden a Marxist?" Religiousthought.com. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. &lt;http://www.religiousthought.com/papers/durdenmarxist.pdf&gt;. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton &amp;, 2005. Print. "Is Tyler Durden a Marxist?" Religiousthought.com. Web. 14 Nov. 2011. &lt;http://www.religiousthought.com/papers/durdenmarxist.pdf&gt;. Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-friendly Guide. New York [etc.: Garland, 1999. Print.