Fight Club By Chuck Palahniuk
A Brotherhood of Violence Violence has always been seen as a man's game. Whether it is war, hunting or competitive sports, history has always shown men to be the fighters and soldiers of society. Fight Club attempts to discover why some men are so drawn to fighting, and has shown some strong connections between fighting and the social and psychological aspects of what it means to be masculine. Through the absence of a father figure and the warped idea of the perfect image for a man, physically and socially, Chuck Palahniuk uses Fight Club to show how the pursuit of living an ideal man's life and falling short leads to the compromised desire to engage in fighting to replace those missing elements. Men who did not grow up with a father appears
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The narrator himself had only lived with his dad for “six years” (Palahniuk 155), and if all these men were raised in similar types of households, their mutual void could have ended up in a mutual desire. They did not have access to a teacher of masculinity and so did not know how to grow up as the kind of man that is seen as socially accepted or simply even manly. This lack of guidance is demonstrated even more when the narrator recalls phoning his father for basic advice: “After college, I called him long distance and said, “Now what?” My dad didn't know. When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance I said “Now what?” My dad didn't know” (Palahniuk 155). Neither of them have enough experience to speak with each other meaningfully and do not know how to function in a normal father /son relationship. This disconnection has been …show more content…
The members of fight club do not admire the lifestyle of mild-mannered gentlemen, even if they are still living this way in their normal daylight hours. The narrator used to be satisfied with resolving his anger issues by going to “clean [his] condominium or detail [his] car” (Palahniuk 154), but fight club makes him abandon this habit because it is too “static” (Palahniuk 154). The narrator no longer sees the world as unchanging like the safe and dull office job he dislikes. He sees the world like his body, always changing and acquiring new bruises and scars that each represent a new event and a new chapter in life. The weekly violence allows him to embrace this new social life style by accepting the unpredictable nature of life itself by fighting a new challenger every weekend. The exciting pace of violence has replaced the previous activities of watching violent sports because the very act of fighting, regardless of winning, allows the fighter to feel like he can “trust himself to handle anything” (Palahniuk 156). The violence lets them live the fearless lives they had been missing out on for years, providing the masculinity and brotherhood they can feel alive participating
The narrator himself had only lived with his dad for “six years” (Palahniuk 155), and if all these men were raised in similar types of households, their mutual void could have ended up in a mutual desire. They did not have access to a teacher of masculinity and so did not know how to grow up as the kind of man that is seen as socially accepted or simply even manly. This lack of guidance is demonstrated even more when the narrator recalls phoning his father for basic advice: “After college, I called him long distance and said, “Now what?” My dad didn't know. When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance I said “Now what?” My dad didn't know” (Palahniuk 155). Neither of them have enough experience to speak with each other meaningfully and do not know how to function in a normal father /son relationship. This disconnection has been …show more content…
The members of fight club do not admire the lifestyle of mild-mannered gentlemen, even if they are still living this way in their normal daylight hours. The narrator used to be satisfied with resolving his anger issues by going to “clean [his] condominium or detail [his] car” (Palahniuk 154), but fight club makes him abandon this habit because it is too “static” (Palahniuk 154). The narrator no longer sees the world as unchanging like the safe and dull office job he dislikes. He sees the world like his body, always changing and acquiring new bruises and scars that each represent a new event and a new chapter in life. The weekly violence allows him to embrace this new social life style by accepting the unpredictable nature of life itself by fighting a new challenger every weekend. The exciting pace of violence has replaced the previous activities of watching violent sports because the very act of fighting, regardless of winning, allows the fighter to feel like he can “trust himself to handle anything” (Palahniuk 156). The violence lets them live the fearless lives they had been missing out on for years, providing the masculinity and brotherhood they can feel alive participating