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Laz

Sue

What's So Funny

In the novel Fight Club, the author, Chuck Palahniuk, brings the reader

into a world of pain, suffering, violence, and aggression, in order to

reconnect the modern man to masculinity. Surrounded by material objects

and doused in the ideas of tolerance and suppression of one's anger, the

Generation X man of the 90s had lost his primal connection to healthy male

aggression. Palahniuk shows both sides of the spectrum and their effects:

detachment from oneself through consumerism and suppressing one' true

feelings, and attachment with one's self through expressing one's true

feelings through violence and chaos. Palahniuk satirizes the idea that the

Generation X men aren't really "men" anymore because of the cultural

changes in masculinity, caused by feminine consumerism. He does this by

emasculating the narrator entirely, and contrasting him to a hyper-masculine

character. Together, they find salvation in overly aggressive and overly

masculine organizations. This all leads to chaos, and Palahniuk is showing

that you cannot live being totally emasculated, or overly masculine.

Palahniuk satirizes the lack of masculinity in modern men by making

the narrator an emasculate consumer with feminine tendencies. The narrator

begins by not being able to sleep. He is obsessed with material objects, and

feels distant from himself. He feels like he doesn't know who he is, and that
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his possessions define him. After taking his doctor's advice, he starts going

to support groups, most importantly, a support group for men with testicular

cancer, to see people who are in real pain. He cries with a man, Bob, who

developed breasts from steroid overuse, and had to get his testicles

removed due to the cancer. Bob embodies more feminine characteristics

than masculine characteristics. The narrator hugs him and cries, seeking the

comfort from another man with no masculinity. He is understood, and

accepted by somebody. This allows him to sleep.

In a brain parasites support group, he is required to find his power

animal, which is a penguin. A penguin is a bird that looks like a bird, and

technically, is a bird, but it cannot fly, which is a bird's most basic

characteristic. The narrator is a man that looks like a man, and technically, is

a man, but he has no aggression, which is one of the most basic

characteristics of masculinity. Then Marla joins his testicular cancer support

group; his sanctuary. She is the opposite of the narrator; she embodies many

masculine characteristics, and very few feminine characteristics. She knows

that the narrator doesn't have testicular cancer. She knows he goes for the

support, and she doesn't accept him like the others do. An aggressive

masculine response, which he daydreams about, is confronting her, and

yelling at her until she leaves. He is not a masculine character who does not

act with aggression, so he acts passively, without confrontation, and the

insomnia continues.
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Tyler is an exaggerated version of Palahniuk's traditional, aggressive,

masculine man. He "saves" the narrator from his old, emasculated life. After

the narrator's home gets destroyed, Tyler takes him in, and pushes him into

a hyper-masculine, satirized world. They create Fight Club as a way to prove

their masculinity through violence, and it acts a way to let him vent his

aggression that he feels pressured, by society, to contain. Palahniuk satirizes

the idea that hiding your true feelings is feminine, and not expressing them

is denying yourself of your own masculinity. This is a trait that the

Generation X man has obtained, and made them less like actual men.

In the lye scene, Tyler forces the narrator into a situation of intense

pain and suffering. The narrator doesn't want to get a chemical burn, but

Tyler corresponds pain with genuine experiences. He feels that the only way

to have a true experience anymore is through violence and pain. Before the

narrator was "remasculated," he would sit around, controlled by material

objects, feeling detached from his own life. After Tyler made him suffer and

feel pain, he could become attached to his own life, and feel alive. Tyler

wants him to express all of his aggression, relinquish all control of his

emotions by inflicting pain on someone else to truly feel like a living man. He

also wants him to control all of his emotions, and accept the suffering when

pain is being inflicted on him.

Fight Club and Project Mayhem are overly-masculine scenarios, where

Palahniuk is trying to satirize the effects of excess aggression. Fight Club


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connects man with their primal instincts of "kill or be killed." The narrator is

living in a world in which he feels completely detached from his masculinity.

He doesn't express his aggression, mesmerized by IKEA catalogs, and

seeking acceptance in support groups, until he starts Fight Club. Only once

he starts engaging in these exaggeratedly violent acts of aggression does he

feel connected with his masculinity, and ultimately, himself. Within

Generation X, acting violently is frowned upon, and men have to find more

appropriate ways to express their aggression. Before (approximately) the

1960s, it was fairly common for men to act violently. Tyler wants to bring the

narrator back to the mindset that expressing aggression through violence is

acceptable. Once Fight Club gains popularity, Project Mayhem gets formed.

Tyler's goal for Project Mayhem is, essentially, to cause chaos. Chaos makes

people rely on their basic instincts; it brings people back to their primal

roots. Tyler wants to get rid of modern society with Project Mayhem in order

to cause chaos, and make people act like raw human beings, as opposed to

mindless bots controlled by consumer products. He wants to break down

society so that he can bring people back to their primal state of living, and

make everyone, universally, rely on basic instincts. Palahniuk didn't actually

believe that this was a good idea. Fight Club and Project Mayhem are

projections of what he believes would be the effects of excessive masculinity

and excessive aggression. They are exaggerated versions of ways that

people express themselves in Generation X, because violent expressions of

aggression are looked down upon on our society.


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Palahniuk did not write Fight Club to be taken seriously. He did not

have any intention of convincing teenagers to make clubs in which they beat

each other senseless. He wanted to give examples of what life is like for

people who are consumed by our materialistic society, and people who have

no way of expression their aggression. He also wanted to give examples of

what life is like for people who try to break down our society because they

are consumed by its flaws, and they cannot stand it. They let out their

aggression in non-creative and non-constructive ways, which is as pointless

as beating yourself up.

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