Fight Club Essay

Pain, both emotional and physical pain, are two very important aspects of humanity which can be defined by a multitude of emotions and states of minds. Chuck Palahniuk, in his book titled Flight Club captures this notion of pain and self destruction and the existence and importance pain has in each of our lives. Everyone experiences some degree of pain in their lifetime, whether the pain we combat is emotional pain, caused by a traumatic experience in life or physical pain that is caused by self infliction or by someone else. I think a lot of people use pain as an escape mechanism; in the novel Fight Club it certainly seems like it is used as a means of escape from life but oddly enough it is also used to represent life. The complete visceral and jarring experience of having your lights punched out seems to be Fight Club’s way of offering its characters a means of escape from a pathetically pampered, pain free existence, but at the same time it is creating life for many of the characters in the book. The novel seems to consist of men who are already in a great deal of pain because of shattered dreams and the illusion they were taught to believe in by society. Project Mayhem is something that gives each of these men in the novel something to fight for and something to fight against. Many of the men who participate in fight club are already in a great deal of pain because many of them grew up without a father figure. Is it necessary though to feel pain to be able to live life? I would think that people would do everything in their nature to avoid ever feeling any real pain, but at the same time it is necessary to associate life with pain; therefore if you have never felt any real pain in life, you are probably not living life the way it is intended to be lived. I agree with this notion that it is necessary to feel pain in life to really live, but if you do not feel pain, you should not take it upon yourself and inflict pain to feel alive.
The main character in the

Cited: Braid, Laura, Cahusac, Peter M.B. "Decreased sensitivity to self-inflicted pain." Vol. 124 Issue 1/2Sept 2006 p134-139. 10 March 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21921656&site=ehost-live>. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. First Owl Books Edition. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1996.