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Literary analysis of fight club
Fight club analysis essay
Literary analysis of fight club
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Fight Club by Jack Palahniuk
“You are not your job. You are not how much you have in the bank. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your khakis. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. What happens first is you can’t sleep. What happens then is there’s a gun in your mouth. And what happens next is you meet Tyler Durden. Let me tell you about Tyler. He had a plan. In Tyler we trusted. Tyler says the things you own, end up owning you. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything. Fight Club represents that kind of freedom. First rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club. Second rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight Club. Tyler says self-improvement is masturbation. Tyler says self-destruction might be the answer.”
The novel Fight Club, by Jack Palahniuk was published in 1996 and released as a motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in October of 1999. Both the novel and motion picture proved to be very successful in their release to the public for one simple reason: Fight Club is a reflection of the suffering experienced by the ‘Generation X’ male who feels trapped in a world of the grey-collar (or service) working-class, a world filled with materialism and distractions, a group of men raised in single-parent families often devoid of a male role-model, and a world where there is no great cause for the average North American male to fight for. Whether consciously, or subconsciously, the average ‘Generation X’ male of modern society can relate to and understand Fight Club, which makes both the novel and motion picture such an important proclamation regarding the state of our modern culture.
In Fight Club, we meet our main character who comes to us without a name. He can be referred to as ‘Jack’ but his name is not important. He comes to us without a name because he represents ‘any man’, any one of those ‘Generation X’ males living in our society at present. Jack is a thirty-year old man employed as a recall coordinator for a major automobile company. He lives in a condo that is furnished with all the comforts of modern society, namely mass-produced furnishings that can be found in the homes of millions across North America. Jack owns a car and has obtained a respectable wardrobe for himself over the course of time.
“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” This is the underlying message in Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), which satirically analyzes and critiques consumerism. The films characters vividly depict society’s immersion in materialism and presents viewers with the harsh reality regarding the irrelevance of material possessions.
Adolescents and young adults have been disregarding the rules of the older generation and sparking up arguments since time could tell. One of the forerunners for this teen-angst filled defiance was none other than the king of outcasts, Kurt Cobain, lead singer and songwriter for Nirvana. Cobain was a trailblazer ready to defy the Baby Boomers and all that the tired generation saw to be important; Cobain pushed against many traditional structures but few more relevant than sexism and the mainstream music industry. Cobain rallied his army of misfits, labeled Generation X, to also stand against the sexists and the money-grubbing music bosses. Although Cobain didn’t do so by leading rallies or picket-marches, he found his rebellious essence through writing strange, contentious, and confusing music. With this in mind, it’s easy to say that Kurt Cobain was a model for Generation X; however, he is most notable as a rebel writer that expressed his resistance to sexism and to the music industry through his unconventional writing, mixed-music styles, and controversial songs.
What do Marlon Brando, James Dean and Henry Winkler all have in common? Well, besides the fact that they are all from the 50’s, they have all portrayed characters that epitomized the American teenager’s rebellion. At one point in time, teens in the United States drew inspiration from these actors to figuratively say “Screw You Mom and Dad.” These men undoubtedly changed the youth culture in America. Further along in time, we watched “hippie” teen’s rebel against their conformists’ parents in the 60’s and “Grunge head”, Nirvana-listeners sneak out of the house to go do illicit narcotics in the 90’s. One must admit that there is something quite perplexing about this sweet American air, that makes teens disobey their parents. While the American teenage rebellion is a natural part of maturity and is an accepted cultural “norm”, there is a lesser acknowledged insurgence.
Racism has been and always will be a form of segregation concurrently and in the history of humanity. From Ancient times to current, the status of segregation by some means of oppression privied by power, wealth, and prestige has been as second nature as drinking water. While Coates has his own perspective of reality and its structure, it’s interesting that a so called genius had taken almost 30 years to finally see the true nature of “the beast” he frequented. That Beast known as Racist America and all if its capitalist racial qualities. While some have their own experiences and perspectives, “Between The World and Me”, past historical events on racism in America including the Civil Rights Movement, correlative measures of other countries on racism and the slave trade, and the many obstacles that are implemented to secure such advantages will continue to be the key topics of discussion.
If you have watched the film Fight Club in regards to the early 1990’s and it’s American Consumerism it has a major effect on the countries early audiences which are males between 15 and 34 primarily all white. This led to a huge problem and was considered a controversial film. A film that would impact the world and the society in which people lived in leading to a public response. The huge question towards fight club is if the society would allow such in tolerant actions and if it’s possible to be controversial over the actions of rebellion. Fight Club has nothing to do with revolution but it is about the impossibility of it. This film criticizes the corporations and media and even pushes to criticize any big organizations looking to react against them. When the term Project Mayhem is introduced you noticed that a disorganized number or chaos, a group of men all wearing the same clothes chanting in unison in an anarchy way. The idea of individualism is terminated which is a major attribute of any revolution. For example fascism, communism or whatever idea you can think of. Some can argue that in this film the idea of individualism as it in introduced to us growing up is not the same but it’s a homogenization of the self, which is served to benefit the powers. This of it like this, you have the option to choose out of the two cars a land rover or a range rover. That is your freedom right there. This film helps open up the eyes of all values leading to individualism and has a strange complex with the main character and his different personality disorders. Fight club focuses on the ideas and the values of anyone who has power and those that are seeking to rebel against it.
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.
The Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, constructs an underground world of men fighting with one another to find the meaning to their lives. Ed Norton and Brad Pitt are the main characters who start the fight club. They make a set of rules that everyone must follow. The fight club exists because individuals get weighted down by possessions, causing them to miss the deep meaning of life. Most of the people in the fight club hold service jobs or lower level management jobs that are meaningless.
"What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women . . .. I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need." These words are from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club. Tyler Durden is the alter ego, and only known name of the fictional narrator of the novel. Tyler suffers from Dissociative Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Primary Insomnia, and probably a host of other disorders that I am not qualified to properly diagnose.
Friday, Krister. ""A Generation of Men Without History": Fight Club, Masculinity, and the Historical Symptom." Project MUSE. 2003.
In a contemporary sense, however, racism is the claim that racism does not exist. The new ideal of colorblindness serves to promote niceness politics. The refusal to acknowledge the pervasiveness of racism is the new racism. Society promotes the use of politically correct terms and the idea of equality when the mentality of racism is far from extinct. The act of even recognizing race, of recognizing the mental associations with race, is in fact racism. This state of neutrality is a luxury only the privileged can access. This impartiality is the exertion of power by the racially privileged and is increasingly destructive towards the ‘other’.
Racism can be defined as "any set of beliefs, which classifies humanity into distinct collectives, defined in terms of natural and/or cultural attributes, and ranks these attributes in a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority" (Blum 5). It can be directly linked to the past and still, centuries later, serves as a painful reminder that race continues to be one of the "sharpest and deepest divisions in American life" (Loewen 138). What were the causes of racism? How did it develop historically? In order to answer those complex questions, I plan to examine the conditions of America's history from colonialism to present day society. It was these conditions of America's past that promoted the development of racist practices and ideas that continue to be embraced by many to this day.
Racism is the mistreatment of a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, place of origin, or ancestry. The term racism may also denote a blind and unreasoning hatred, envy, or prejudice (Dimensions of Racism). Racism has had a strong effect on society. Despite the many efforts made to alleviate racism, what is the future of African Americans' Racism's long history, important leaders, current status, and future outlook will be the main factors in determining how to combat racism. Racism is still present in many societies, although many people are doing their best to put an end to racism and its somewhat tragic ordeals.
Eddie Carbone is an American-Sicilian man working in Brooklyn. He works as a longshoreman: carrying crates and goods from the ships. He is quite a large man. His job requires him to be strong and a good worker. In other words he is very masculine. He is an ordinary man. He lives with his wife and niece, whom he treats like a daughter, and like all good men should do, he works every day to provide them with enough money to survive on. Eddie is a man’s man. He lives within a close-knit community of Sicilians and is a well respected member of society. Eddie sees himself as a prime example of how a man should act and look.
However, paradoxically, the process of learning to obtain masculine self-fulfilment is characterised by a boy’s recognition of his inadequacy”. I agree with this because many young men like Dave and myself defines manhood with an age but I learn that from my mistakes. Dave never gave the gun to his mother and ended up killing jenny (the mule) and lied about the death of the resulting in having to pay for the death. It’s easy to lie about something but it’s not so easy to stand just to your action and that’s what a man would do. For me not having freedom and the power to do what I wanted made me learn the hard way because I didn’t have a father who was really involved in my life to teach me.
As stated before, racism has been a major contentious issue in the United States of America. Before the abolition of slavery in the country in the mid 20th century, racism was socially and even legally sanctioned in the country. The rights that were denied to those affected by racism such as African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans, and Asian Americans, among others, were enjoyed...