Setting Analysis – “Fight Club”

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Setting Analysis – “Fight Club”

“My boss doesn’t know the material, but he won’t let me run the demo with a black eye and half my face swollen from the stitches inside my cheek”(Palahniuk, par. 1). Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” deals with a man frustrated on many different levels; from his childhood to present day life. Fight Clubs' setting contributes to what makes Fight Club such a powerful story. The narrator who is never named, starts off in chapter six with what could be described as an office hell; complete with empty smiles and feeble minded speak of which color icon they will use for office reports. The beginning of chapter six reminds the reader of mindless zombie office speak and a lack of life, that is all too common in many peoples lives. The reader will most likely identify with what is written in a manner easily transferable to anyones life. I believe most people, when reading would characterize the office environment as the light side and the hours during fight club at the bottom of the bar the dark side. I would argue the complete opposite. For the narrator, all the hate, the disgust, the total contempt for humanity is created in that office environment. All the feelings of life, and meaning, and what I would characterize as happiness is all felt during the time fight club is in effect in the bottom of that bar.

The narrator is changed by his experience with fight club; his life becomes all about fight club. Fight club becomes the reason for the narrators existence. The narrator experiences a shift in consciousness; in that, he is able to understand more of who he is and what really matters in life through fight clubs trial by fire. Through battle and a mindset of counterculture and a complete expulsion of ...

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...he present in tact for the reader.

The final thought of chapter six brings us to the office character Walter from Microsoft. We are transported back to the present inside the office and after the narrator has allowed the audience to process the current plot, the narrator transfixes on Walter as a new member for fight club. “ You know he was too young to fight in any wars, and if his parents weren’t divorced, his father was never home, and here he’s looking at me with half my face clean shaved and half a leering bruise hidden in the dark. Blood shining on my lips. And maybe Walter’s thinking about a meatless, painfree potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone or the Earth’s desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but probably he’s not” (Palahniuk, par. 21). The reader is left to ponder Walters future within the narrators vision of fight club.

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