Fight Club: Search for Identity
Anna Ngarukiye
Tyler Forrest
English 100-991
December 3rd 2013
Fight Club: a Search for Identity Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is a revolutionary, cynical novel that portrays the need for identity in life and Palahniuk explains, through the narrator’s personality disorder, that the desire for meaning is the sole internal incentive of civilization. The protagonist is powerless and his consequent struggles include emotional troubles, homophobia as well as his inclination towards aggression. The narrator created by Chuck Palahniuk in the novel Fight Club was that perfect employee, with the perfect home, and perfect image. This idea caused him to feel numb, as if he was just a copy of a copy. Tyler however is an illusion generated by the narrator’s mind. He represents a way for the narrator to escape reality, to live a life opposite of his own. He seems to be everything that the narrator is not; he represents the suppressed aspects of the narrator’s personality. Tyler is the perfect man for the narrator, he is a paradigm of freedom and power, and it is exactly what is missing in the narrator’s life. He is also a primal, violent person who gets everybody’s attention when he is in a room; he seems to be always right. Palahniuk writes, “I know this, because Tyler knows this” (112): it emphasizes how the narrator considers Tyler as a forceful and smart person - even, a dogmatist. Tyler is fascinating and motivated; he has the ideas, and the narrator follows. He is a manipulator who transforms people as he wants them to be. As the narrator asserts, “Tyler didn’t care if other people got hurt or not. The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history” (Palahniuk, 122). In Tyler's opinion, a person needs to be remembered in History- a person lost in modern society with no identity has no value in living his life. Therefore, he manipulates and changes people that have difficulties to live a consistent, exciting and happy life –
Tyler Forrest
English 100-991
December 3rd 2013
Fight Club: a Search for Identity Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is a revolutionary, cynical novel that portrays the need for identity in life and Palahniuk explains, through the narrator’s personality disorder, that the desire for meaning is the sole internal incentive of civilization. The protagonist is powerless and his consequent struggles include emotional troubles, homophobia as well as his inclination towards aggression. The narrator created by Chuck Palahniuk in the novel Fight Club was that perfect employee, with the perfect home, and perfect image. This idea caused him to feel numb, as if he was just a copy of a copy. Tyler however is an illusion generated by the narrator’s mind. He represents a way for the narrator to escape reality, to live a life opposite of his own. He seems to be everything that the narrator is not; he represents the suppressed aspects of the narrator’s personality. Tyler is the perfect man for the narrator, he is a paradigm of freedom and power, and it is exactly what is missing in the narrator’s life. He is also a primal, violent person who gets everybody’s attention when he is in a room; he seems to be always right. Palahniuk writes, “I know this, because Tyler knows this” (112): it emphasizes how the narrator considers Tyler as a forceful and smart person - even, a dogmatist. Tyler is fascinating and motivated; he has the ideas, and the narrator follows. He is a manipulator who transforms people as he wants them to be. As the narrator asserts, “Tyler didn’t care if other people got hurt or not. The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history” (Palahniuk, 122). In Tyler's opinion, a person needs to be remembered in History- a person lost in modern society with no identity has no value in living his life. Therefore, he manipulates and changes people that have difficulties to live a consistent, exciting and happy life –