Hannah Stover
11-8-2013
ENG 112
In the novel “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk, Tyler Durden and the Narrator begin a simple fight in a bar one night, which eventually turns into a fight club. Tyler Durden is a radical character who wants to bring society to anarchy due to his belief that there is social inequality and that that inequality can only be changed by having everyone in society hit their rock bottom. The Narrator, before he meets Tyler, is an insomniac who goes to support group meeting that he does not even have the condition for to make himself feel better and sleep at night. After the Narrator meets Tyler and they have their bar fight, Tyler begins to change the way the Narrator thinks, eventually turning him into someone almost as angry at the world as himself, and trying to find a way to hit rock bottom. The Narrator finds a new way to hit his all time low through being a part of fight club, losing his possessions, and feel like a man. It can be argued that that hitting rock bottom is the only way for society to feel renewed and satisfied because identifying to much with material items takes away from your identity and happiness in your own accomplishments.
When the Narrator’s apartment blows up, he loses everything that was in it, all his furniture that he prized so much. The Narrator talked about his IKEA furniture as if it was something he has worked hard to produce, or as if it was something great he had accomplished. “My Haparanda sofa group with the orange slip covers, design by Erika Pekkari, it was trash, now” (Palahniuk 43) and “It took my whole life to buy this stuff” (Palahniuk 44). When Tyler Durden begins to steer the Narrator toward rock bottom, he wants him to realize that this furniture and consumerism is what is wrong with society. The fact that the Narrator is totally devastated by his cheap furniture being obliterated demonstrates that many people in society invest to much in material things and not enough in their own accomplishments.
Another way the men in Fight Club began to detach themselves from materialistic belongings was to join the fight club that Tyler and the Narrator began and spread around the world. The fight club, although extremely violent and brutal, made the men feel free and relaxed the day after. The fight club gave them more confidence and self appreciation, as if they have found happiness in something non material. “even a week after fight club, you’ve got no problem driving inside the speed limit…after fight club your so relaxed, you just cannot care” (Palahniuk 139). the fight club give the men who join the escape they need from the pressures of consumerism and the need for getting identity from material belongings. Fight club makes the fighters want to accomplish something and have scars to show what they are a part of and personally worked for, not bought in a store like a piece of furniture. What the men who fight gain at fight club is something that cannot be destroyed and taken away from them, and they can prove that to anyone without saying anything or having to be of a certain social class.
The way Tyler Durden approaches his movement toward elimination of identity through owning material things and breaking down social inequality is radical, violent, and illogical in many ways. Though when looked at for the main message of what Palahniuk wants the reader to contemplate through the views and ideas of the character of Tyler Durden is that only having pride in material items you own will not make you happy, or give you true self gratification. Material items can be swept away at any moment, unlike fight scars and the feeling of winning, something such as a fight, just as the men did in fight club.
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