The Call to Adventure in Fight Club, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & The picture of Dorian Gray
Within all of us is a good and a dark side, and it is our own decisions which shape whether we adhere to societal norms and accepted behavior or indulge in unsavory practices. However, in order for a hero or villain to fulfill their destiny, they must be called into action by a herald. The herald is a person or piece of information that upsets the equilibrium in which the hero lives and forces him into action. The herald can be a person, as in the case of Tyler Durden in Fight Club, and Mr. Hyde in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or a piece of information in the case of the yellow book in the Picture of Dorian Gray. While the calls to adventure in these three novels may be different, they share one key similarity, the hero called into action has an evil side that they may or may not be aware of.
In Fight Club, Tyler Durden is a mysterious stranger who the unnamed narrator meets while on a plane ride. Tyler espouses a theory of independence from modern society and the corporations that the Narrator works for. The Narrator is beguiled by Tyler’s lifestyle of freedom and irresponsibility and eventually joins him when his apartment is eventually burned down in a freak accident. Together, they begin the titular Fight Club as a means of empowering themselves in a society that they feel has robbed them of their masculinity. In this way, Tyler plays the role of the herald in the Narrator’s journey, he instills a philosophy in the Narrator that eventually brings about a fundamental change in his character and leads to him growing as a person. However, Tyler is not all that he seems, he is in fact a figment of the Narrat...
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Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1993. Print.
Over time, the United States has experienced dramatic social and cultural changes. As the culture of the United States has transformed, so have the members of the American society. Film, as with all other forms of cultural expression, oftentimes reflects and provides commentary on the society in which it is produced. David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club examines the effects of postmodernity on masculinity. To examine and explicate these effects, the film presents an unnamed narrator, an everyman, whose alter-ego—in the dissociative sense—is Tyler Durden.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Dover Publishing, Inc., 1991.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. First Vintage Classics Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Review of Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
...ve duality of man;… if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” Thus, Stevenson creates in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two coexistent, and eternally opposed components that make up a “normal” individual. However, here, good and evil are not related but are two independent entities, individuals even, different in mental and physical attributes and constantly at war with each other. Evil now does not require the existence of good to justify itself but it exists simply as itself, and is depicted as being the more powerful, the more enjoyable of the two, and in the end ultimately it is the one that leads to Dr. Jekyll's downfall and death. Stevenson creates the perfect metaphor for the never-ending battle between good and evil by using Jekyll and Hyde. However, this novella is perhaps one of the few that truly show the power of Evil.
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a story set in nineteenth century England and focuses on Doctor Jekyll and his alternative personality, Edward Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson was born in the year 1850, in the midst of the Victorian era. Victorian Morality is the term that represents the moral of the people living in this time period. This concept supported sexual repression, low tolerance of criminal activity, and a strong social responsibility.
“I had to know what Tyler was doing while I was asleep. If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?” (Palahniuk 32). When Tyler is in action, narrator is not contemporaneous in a sense that he is Tyler now. Tyler is someone who doesn’t give any importance to money-oriented world but he indeed believes in the willpower of constructing a classless society. The narrator is insomniac, depressed, and stuck with unexciting job. Chuck’s prominent, pessimistic, radical work, Fight Club, investigates inner self deeper and deeper into personality, identity, and temperament as a chapter goes by. Through his writing, Chuck Palahniuk comments on the inner conflicts, the psychoanalysis of narrator and Tyler Durden, and the Marxist impression of classicism. By not giving any name to a narrator, author wants readers to engage in the novel and associate oneself with the storyline of narrator. The primary subject and focus of the novel, Fight Club, is to comment socially on the seizing of manhood in the simultaneous world. This novel is, collectively, a male representation where only a single woman, Marla Singer, is exemplified. “Tyler said, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can” (46). This phrase is a mere representation of how to start a manly fight club. However, in the novel this scene is written as if two people are physically fighting and splashing blood all over the parking lot, in reality it’s just an initiation of fight club which resides in narrator’s inner self. The concept of this club is that the more one fights, the more one gets sturdier and tougher. It is also a place where one gets to confront his weaknesses and inner deterioration.
Robert, Stevenson L. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Dover Publications, 2013. Print.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde London: Longmans, Green & co. 1886 Print
Being one of the world’s most popular art forms, it was inevitable that these archetypes would find their way into film as well. In this essay I will argue that the films Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, Watership Down, and Trainspotting are all versions of The Hero’s Journey, consequently demonstrating just how prevalent these archetypes have become in modern cinema. And that mythology and storytelling are important parts of each culture because they prevent the darkness in our hearts from spreading.
In the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk we are introduced to our narrator, a nameless male who stands atop the Parker-Morris building with a gun pressed to his mouth waiting for the moment when the bombs go off and the building crumbles. Holding the gun to his mouth is Tyler Durden who represents everything the narrator is not. The narrator is a man presumably in his 30's, although it is never stated. He works as a recall campaign coordinator and lives in a condo furnished with the latest furniture. Tyler Durden is none of these things, Tyler Durden works various jobs and sells soap made of human fat. Tyler Durden lives in a dilapidated house with makeshift furnishings and questionable utilities. Tyler Durden is satisfied with his life, unlike our narrator who suffers from chronic insomnia and who often speaks bitterly about the corporate life.
Stevenson focuses on two different characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but in reality these are not separate men, they are two different aspects of one man’s reality. In the story, Dr. Je...
Stevenson Robert L., Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales. (USA: oxford university press, 2008)
Tyler Durden encourages the narrator to give up his consumerist, meaningless life to fight the exploitation inherent in corporate society. Similarly, Marx believed that the capitalist system inherently exploited workers, arguing that the interests of the capitalist class conflicted with that of the working class. Additionally, Marx’s core concept of historical materialism is realized in Fight Club. The narrator in this film strives to express himself through the items he possesses, searching for meaning in his life through physical objects. He looks for release in buying more and more things he does not need. This illustrates historical materialism, in which Marx argues that people are what they have. Additionally, Marx argues that the flow of ideas is also controlled by the capitalist class. The narrator in Fight Club is forced to come to terms with these ideas. He learns that buying and consuming more material objects does not make him happy, and is forced to confront the destruction of his consumerist identity when his apartment is suddenly destroyed. Additionally, the narrator’s thoughts are never completely his own, suggesting that he is grappling with the controlled flow of ideas inherent in capitalist society. All of these factors combine to force the narrator to look for life fulfillment elsewhere, hence the formation of fight club and the friendship of the dangerous Tyler
Stevenson, Robert L. "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The Norton Anthology of