fight club essay

English
Fight Club

Experiencing death and grief brings a new mindset to a person’s life. Regardless of whether it is a physical or emotional death, grieving for a person, or facing a broken dream, it defines and gives life a new meaning, along with a sense of happiness and gratefulness. It shows the other side of things, as it’s learning by experience, and this is one of the best ways to learn. In the book Fight club, the main character struggles and complains of his unimportant existence, and Marla is a suicidal, careless woman with no motivation until she started attending cancer support groups, fell in love and experienced loss, when her life was given meaning. The men involved in the fights were seeking to add significance to their lives through the fights. It is in pain, death and grief that one acknowledges and appreciates reality, the hand of cards given to each one of us in life, and sets priorities straight and a passionate focus. Only through these feelings is it possible that life’s fragility can be recognized and that maturity can be set in. With maturity comes setting limits, values, and goals for one’s life. In the book, Marla and the men of fight club show how important pain is as a part of the human experience, and that you have to embrace pain to experience life fully.
For men, scars have a prideful meaning- it denotes grandiosity and bravery in living a life to its fullest. Scars bring about memories of moments of pain and that established a mark that changed our bodies from normal perfect skin to a place of reminiscence. In the book, fighting had a significant meaning. Being a men, being alive, and having a body used for a purpose helped men overcome their fears. These fears were faced by these men every day. Fear of losing their job, or of staying in it for life, fear of not being able to use their strength or muscles, fear of not being able to feel, fear of continuing to live with a lack of guidance or paternal figure. It all started by an unusual moment where “Tyler said, ‘I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can’. I didn’t want to, but Tyler explained it all, about not wanting to die without any scars..”(52) and then they fought. Tyler became that paternal figure for many and they all felt their lives were not a waste. They felt they had a purpose in life- to fight, to follow a leader, and to limit their time in wasteful things. Living under the shadow of death and pain brought acceptance to their lives.
Embracing life by living on the edge of death was also the way Marla lived. She faked having cancer and explained how alive she felt at support groups. The narrator described “[t]here was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh but now there was the dying and death and loss and grief…Now that she knows where we’re all going, Marla feels every moment of her life” (38). But where is this place we are all going? It is not that Marla was a believer of the existence of heaven, but that she now saw the light at the end of the tunnel and death, along with all of the grieving and mourning that was there, and she could feel those emotions and a sense of direction for her life. She was not sick, but she pretended being terminally ill to be able to belong with a group of those that had a purpose and a destiny, even if this was death. The sense of direction and purpose brought her intense enjoyment and fulfillment. It was in having proof that the process of dying was taking place, like having some type of cancer, where the process of living started for her.
The course of life in a cancer patient is reshaped dramatically when the diagnosis has been pronounced. In the TV show American Morning, CNN, 13 June 2003, Bill Hemmer said: "you said cancer changed your life, and oftentimes for the better.’ To what Joel Siegel responded: ‘Yes.... Gilda Radner... said this in her book. What cancer does is, it forces you to focus, to prioritize, and you learn what’s important. I mean, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I used to get angry at cab drivers. It’s not worth it.... And when somebody says you have cancer, you realize it’s all small stuff. And what Gilda said is, if it weren’t for the downside, everyone would want to have it. But there is a downside”. There is no way these realizations and priorities can be achieved in such a simple and fast way, unless cancer is in the picture. The suffering associated with cancer redefines what we used to think suffering was. There is a sense of freedom in this knowledge, in learning what is truly significant in life and living only for those significant moments.
The true significance of life originates when we realize that even in losing something, much is able to be gained in life. Fight club specifies this when the main character loses all of his belongings and starts changing his life significantly. Tyler tells the narrator “It’s only after you’ve lost everything,’ Tyler says, ‘that you’re free to do anything” (70). Loss and failure teaches you what is it that you truly want from life and helps you set your priorities straight, because it is acting upon those priorities when your boring reality becomes an adventure, when you experience what fully living is. Gaining that meaning was accomplished by fighting, by inspiring other men to do the unthinkable, to dare to be how they really wanted to be and by caring for Marla, regardless of how unbalanced their relationship was. Support groups became supporting friends, and facing reality was the beginning of a healthy life for our narrator. Pain, loss and grief allow us to embrace life with freedom and live life to the fullest.
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