The Fight Club: Main Themes In The Fight Club

1004 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Fight club themes and analysis

One of the main themes in the book “Fight Club” are mental illness, mixed with loneliness and freedom from the expectations of society.

Tyler, one of the main characters, is created due to protagonists’ lack of connection with people around him. The protagonist had a sense of loneliness and attended several support groups to alleviate the feeling. He was not rejected at the support groups as the members thought he was sick just like they were, yet the feeling of his loneliness was not alleviated.

Materialism is another recurrent theme. The narrator mentions how he has worked his entire life for the cheap, bare-bone items in his apartment. He tried to fill the void in his life by buying worthless, meaningless stuff. Eventually, he finds
The narrator finally discovers that Tyler was a figment of his imagination. He at that points must stop him. To get rid of Tyler, end Project Mayhem, and all of the Fight Clubs; however, was not an easy task. Tyler did not want to leave and this conflict was only resolved with the narrator after shooting himself and thus killing
It seems that this mental voice is productive, it does change him in the way that he wants to change; however, it is also destructive since this becomes a negative and explosive relationship, eventually leading to an attempted suicide.

Overall, the story of fight club resolves around mental illness, the battle of our narrator, out patient, with the voice inside him. Through this story, large themes are explored including materialism and freedom in society. A major theme of Fight Club is an answer to the rejection of a consumer society is with the use of violence. Fighting was a way to free a man from society. Material items are seen as malevolent because they enslave us and control us.

We desire many luxuries and take them for granted. Our society is based largely on the materialistic wants of consumers from advertising and marketing. This demand distracts us from who we really are and should be destroyed. The filmmakers have adapted many of these meanings into the film that was

Show More
Related

  • Materialism in The Dharma Bums and Goodbye, Columbus

    1377 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kerouac also reflects on the futile trap of materialism. Japhy discusses "all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least fancy new cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.

    Read More

  • Criticisms of Consumerism and Materialism in Fight Club (1999)

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    The opening scenes of the movie focus on the narrator, the epitome of a consumerist. He asserts, “Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct…I would flip through catalogues and wonder ‘what kind of dining set defines me as a person?’” His IKEA fetish is the outcome of his unfound identity. He purchases these goods not because he needs them, but because it is represented as the optimum apartment for a single man in catalogues.

    Read More

  • Response Essay One on Fight Club (film)

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    In historical context the rise of the free market industries is at its peak. In the year 1999 oil industries, electronics, fast food, clothing lines hit the front line. For the first time ever poor people are able to have what rich people have. Keeping up with the Jones, as many people say. There is this mindset of get it now and pay for it later. This leave most of the working class in debt. While consumers get the latest luxuries they are being “Consumed by Consumerism” (Domigpe). We have all become slaves to the brands of everything we buy. For example, when new electronics come out on the market that is mostly a want, but looks awesome, we buy it to keep up with the Jones and also because the advertisements tell us to. We also need the companies to live, because without them there is no employment. “Because of this circle, which is hanging over everybody in a modern society, the capitalists have pushed us into a place, where consumerism and capitalism go hand in hand” (Denzin). With the deb...

    Read More

  • Film Analysis: A Rebel Without a Cause

    1290 Words  | 3 Pages

    This movie focused on teenagers and family life because the ideal image of the 1950s family was a perfect family consisting of a mom and dad with two children. Everything with the family appears to be great and full of happiness. The father went to work and provided for the family, while the mother stayed at home and tended to her children and maintaining the home. This thriving period can be described as the golden age of family because the 1950s stereotype of the perfect family life instigated this suspected boom of happiness of the American family. However, A Rebel Without A Cause expresses that the times were not as perfect as they were depicted. Dysfunctional families that led their young adults to rebellion shape the movie.

    Read More

  • Fight Club Movie Vs Book Analysis

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    As I read the novel, I couldn’t help but to compare each word to the movie. I may have just recently watched it, but I was suddenly unsure of what I had seen. Was my memory failing me or were things truly that different? I felt like these differences changed the entire story line. The narrator shouldn’t be in a building that was about to be destroyed, this defeated the purpose of Project Mayhem. Then again, I was only on page one.

    Read More

  • Comparative Essay between “Fight Club” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Palahniuk’s Fight Club, Tyler Durden is a conformist to society that experienced a personal tragedy which led him to disengage from the societal normality and found an organization known as Fight Club, an underground street fighting competition. Tyler was once an aspiring businessperson. His failure was the cause of his conformity. Tyler then began to work as a security guard, primarily conducting after hour duties. This led him to begin stealing left over human fat to create the ingredients for the manufacture of explosives with the aim of supplementing his income (Schuessler). Here a personal tragedy, specifically failure, led to a behavioural condition known as disengagement. Tyler retracted himself from the typical American societal expectations and rebelled through forms of crime and backlash.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of 'America' By Tony Hoagland

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    Principal themes in the poem consist of consumerism, capitalism, and most importantly greed. The poem described the journey of the poet as he went--goes through an implied spiritual transformation starting with getting annoyed with one of his students wanting to yell at him “how full of shit” he is, after that he recalled his dream, after dowsing off, he recalled something else a poem by Karl Marx a major communist. “I was listening to cries of the past when I should have been listening to the cries of the future,” after the fact, he came to an understanding with the student while imagining the mediforeical nightmare. Grouping themes together there are dreams, nightmares, waking life, dream life, sleeping, and clarity exactly, and being aware that the person is dreaming. When Hoagland references people drowning in the river, it could be compared to people working across seas in different countries, manufacturing goods for the average American while the workers live in harsh environments, but no one thinks of that when running around in new Nike shoes. The “you” in the pleasure boat is American people or America frankly, or even the ideals of consumerism were the normal person needs a new IPhone ever year when it is released. In the poets dream when he talks about stabbing his father and “Ben Fra...

    Read More

  • Fight Club

    2011 Words  | 5 Pages

    In conclusion to this analysis of these characters they go together where the resolve is Jack coming to the conclusion that he had truly taken his life threw a complete twist and in all seriousness didn’t want to experience being Tyler. What was seen there this analysis that Tyler was a real person and Jack was very jealous and everyone around wanted to be like him. Jack eventually grew as a man and wanted to use everything he experience to help mold him as an individual. They way in which he commanded at the end of the movie by shooting himself giving complete orders to the guys in project mayhem that this is something that Jack would have done. To us as an audience you can tell that they he has grown through the movie and took complete ownership.

    Read More

  • fight club

    645 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fight Club is not about winning or losing. Paul Palahniuk’s Fight Club is about the issues of masculinity in our modern capitalist society. It is a novel about men who resist conforming to what society defines as masculine. In our present day culture, men are presented with the ideal form of masculinity that they are expected to achieve such as being successful in the work place, going to the gym, and grooming yourself to look attractive. The unnamed narrator of the story undergoes an identity crisis, which is a result of capitalism; he struggles to find himself by going through various support groups before finally attending Fight Club. The consumer driven society has replaced the traditional values of masculinity, which creates conflicts and becomes the catalyst for Fight club: a place to re-masculinize through physical combat.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of Fight Club

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fight Club is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. This is a story about a protagonist who struggles with insomnia. An anonymous character suffering from recurring insomnia due to the stress brought about by his job is introduced to the reader. He visits a doctor who later sends him to visit a support group for testicular cancer victims, and this helps him in alleviating his insomnia. However, his insomnia returns after he meets Marla Singer. Later on, the narrator meets Tyler Durden, and they together establish a fight club. They continue fighting until they attract crowds of people interested in the fight club. Fight club is a story that shows the struggles between the upper class and lower class people. The upper class people here undermine the working class people by considering them as cockroaches. In addition, Palahniuk explores the theme of destruction throughout the book whereby the characters destroy their lives, body, building and the history of their town.

    Read More

  • Fight Club

    519 Words  | 2 Pages

    Society becomes so rationalized that one must push himself to the extreme in order to feel anything or accomplish anything. The more you fight in the fight club, the tougher and stronger you become. Getting into a fight tests who you are. No one helps you, so you are forced to see your weaknesses. The film celebrates self-destruction and the idea that being on the edge allows you to be beaten because nothing really matters in your life.

    Read More

  • Fight Club Case Study

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    Our group collectively decided to choose the movie Fight Club as the movie to review for this case study. Fight Club was released on October 15, 1999 and is based off the novel written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. The movie was directed by David Fincher and featured several outstanding actors such as Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. We settled on reviewing Fight Club due to the films’ psychologically thrilling nature.

    Read More

  • Masculinity in "Fight Club"

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...from all material items and does not use society’s standards as the rules to his identity. According to Fight Club, Tyler has found his masculine identity and the members of Fight Club are able to do this as well by enduring the pain of Fight Club and not conforming to society’s standards. When one is not tied down to material items and possessions to define them, they see their true identity. This masculinity defined by Fight Club is the theory that freedom comes from having nothing; thereby men are liberated by society’s confines, most specifically the male American Dream.

    Read More

  • One’s True Identity in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    The narrator meets Tyler and realizes quickly that Tyler is everything he is not. The narrator is disappointed in his life when he compares it to Tyler’s. “I am nothing in the world compared to Tyler. I am helpless. I am stupid, and all I do is want and need thin...

    Read More

  • What Are Sigmund Freud's Contributions To Society

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    Consumerism has grown quickly and effectively. It has become so integrated into our modern world that it is no longer singled out. Individuals revolve their life around material objects and repeatedly fall for commercials urging them to purchase unnecessary objects. This system was spearheaded by Bernays. All of our consumer needs are tailored to ensure they are overly fulfilled. A simple task such as going grocery shopping, has been micromanaged by companies; they can pay for product placement. Holiday shopping, sales, blowout events, etc. are all ways to trick the individual into the consumer spiral. Commercials and advertisements find ways to appeal to our so called repressions and bring out our craving to obtain that object. The film explained that most things are attributed to sexual desire, so an example is a perfume commercial with an oversexualized ideal of a woman or man. (The Century of the Self) The economy is only one of the ways we are limited. Freud’s ideas have worked both on an individual level and on a larger

    Read More

More about The Fight Club: Main Themes In The Fight Club

Open Document