IndexIntroductionDiscussionWorks CitedIntroductionThe novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, tells the story of an unnamed protagonist wrapped up in a consumer-driven society. A stereotypical American driven by consumption and possession, he finds himself living day to day as a cog in the machine of a corporate society. Plagued by insomnia and detachment from the world, the narrator must split his personality, thus creating a powerful alter ego with which to attack society. With 20th-century America as a backdrop, Palahniuk writes a powerful critique of the effects of a capitalist, feminized society on the mind of this nameless narrator. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Discussion The narrator of Palahniuk's Fight Club is one of the million cogs in corporate America. Coordinator of the recall campaign for an unnamed company, he describes himself as an average, middle-class American. Traveling for work, he constantly awakens to what he calls a "single-service" life. “I go to the hotel with a small soap, small shampoos, single-serving butter, a small mouthwash, and a disposable toothbrush” (Palahniuk 28). He later describes his obsession with consumer culture, saying, “You buy furniture. You tell yourself that this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa and for a couple of years you will be satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you will have solved your sofa problem. Then the right set of dishes. So the perfect bed. The curtains. The carpet. Then you are trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you once owned now own you” (44). Furthermore, the narrator makes it clear that he is not the only one with an ingrained nesting instinct. Detailing his consumer-oriented life, he states that "the people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalog" (43). As a product-oriented society has become the new American norm, Palahniuk shows us the replacement of stereotypical male activities with domestic "nesting instincts." In her critical analysis of the film version of the novel, "Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Male Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism," Lynn M. Ta suggests that this depiction of American culture displays "an anxiety about masturbatory commercialism by locating the cause of 'the narrator's apparent loss of masculinity in the proliferation of consumer culture, thus making participation in capitalism, once considered an entrepreneurial and masculine enterprise, a feminine activity' (Ta 273). a capitalist society. This capitalist culture, then, can be seen as the root of the loss of traditional masculine values, replacing them with domestic, feminine, and commercial values. In "Fight Club: Historicizing the Rhetoric of Masculinity, Violence, and Sentimentality", Suzanne Clark states advance the theory that the idea of ​​the “domestic individual and consumer (object of middle class desire) is feminine” (Clark 413). It is this domestic, feminine world that we see our narrator fighting against. The novel, therefore, reaffirms the male identity threatened by the feminization of an increasingly consumerist American culture. That said, Palahniuk's unnamed protagonist, in an attempt to regain his lost masculinity, must create Tyler Durden, his alter ego. Tyler is everything the narrator is not. A radical anarchist, Tyler rebels against anything driven by capitalism. During the creation of "Fight Club" (elater by Project Mayhem) Tyler gives an impassioned speech, explaining: “Advertising makes these people chase cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have worked jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. We do not have a great war in our generation, nor a great depression, but we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against culture. The great depression affects our lives" (Palahniuk 149). Without a great war or depression, "Tyler records the lack of purpose experienced by his generation, and his invective not only condemns the capitalist cycle to which they are slaves, but also the ideal of liberalism. who has disillusioned men into thinking that masculinity and success are attainable through personal effort" (Ta 274). Intertwined with the disgust of capitalism is Tyler's revolt against all things feminine. This revolt is evident in the fear of castration that runs throughout the novel. From the beginning of the novel, we see the narrator attempting to cure his insomnia through a self-help group for men suffering from testicular cancer "is able to find comfort among other men who have also experienced a sense of male loss" (Ta 270). However, as Ta explains, the narrator's loss is merely psychological. "Therefore, the fear of castration narrator is relieved in the presence of men who have undergone actual castration" (Ta 270). .In Tyler's creation, the narrator seeks to recover this lost masculinity caused by a capitalist society. It divides into “a sadistic (and masculine) Tyler who criticizes and punishes a masochistic (and feminine) self” (Ta 266). Throughout the novel, we see the narrator and his alter ego rebel against the feminized corporate world. While the narrator expresses fear of castration through his participation in “Remaining Men Together,” his alter ego, Tyler expresses a similar fear of castration. Tyler, working as a film projectionist, splices penis images into family films. Often discussing his ex-father, Tyler says he "starts a new family in a new city about every six years" (Palahniuk 50). When his father suggests that he get married, Tyler responds "I'm a thirty year old guy and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need" (Palahniuk 51). film, Ta suggests that he is “figuratively cutting off his own penis and inserting it into the family unit as a means of reasserting patriarchal authority in an otherwise matriarchal society” (270). Later in the novel, Tyler sees a vibrator on Marla's dresser. "Don't be afraid. He's no threat to you," Marla says. Tyler's fear of castration includes this fake penis that threatens to overtake him, stealing his masculinity once again (Palahniuk 61). Finally, at the end of the novel, the narrator, in an attempt to stop the chaos that Tyler has created, tries to turn himself in. At this point, one of the Project Mayhem members says, "You know the drill, Mr. Durden. You said it yourself. You said, if anyone ever tries to shut down the club, even you, then we need to get them out." nuts" (Palahniuk 187). This time, the narrator has no choice but to physically lose his masculinity if he tries to retreat from his newly created masculine world. Returning to the creation of "Fight Club," Suzanne Clark suggests that "the real danger is an imbalance in the gender wars created by feminism and the Fight Club, the self-help group that will allow men to be men again" (Clark 413). , Tyler (and by extension the narrator), must create theFight Club in an attempt to regain their lost masculinity. “What you see at Fight Club is a generation of men raised by women,” the narrator observes (Palahniuk 50). This comment reflects the narrator's childhood in a family with an absent father. Without a male role model, he (and the other men in Fight Club) engage in more feminized domestic activities in matriarchal culture. In “Oedipal Obsession,” Paul Kennett explores the Oedipal complex found in the narrator. He states, “The narrator views his crisis of identification as a crisis of masculinity, and is swept up in alter ego Tyler Durden's obsessive quest to achieve identification through the classic Oedipal complex” (Kennett 48). If this is theIn this case, his participation in Fight Club and self-violence can be seen as rooted in the Oedipal complex, in which he looks to the created Tyler Durden to provide him with a meaningful identity. Ta, however, looks to Freud and the dissociated identity condition in his analysis of the narrator. She notes that the disempowered male narrator seeks liberation in a brute and regressive Tyler, suggesting that “violence is not only symptomatic, but also constitutive, of this condition of dissociated identity” (Ta 265). Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is, according to Freud, a psychological condition that appears to be the result of severe childhood trauma or abuse. During the process of mental dissociation, the individual fails to establish mental connections between himself and the alternate personality. In the case of Fight Club, the narrator must split his personality to survive. Ta suggests that the narrator is a mirror of Freud's "melancholic sadomasochist" who, recording the loss of a love object, undergoes self-division and splits into a tyrannical one. superego that punishes a submissive ego that in turn grows to enjoy the punishment" (Ta 266). As a cog in the corporate machine, the narrator feels like a victim of a culture that has stolen his masculinity and therefore feels he must protect this masculinity through his unconscious creation of Tyler. It is here, Ta suggests, that Freud's theory of melancholia provides a framework for understanding the narrator's participation in a feminized society while resisting the emasculating culture that Freud claims mourning promotes it is the state in which an individual reacts to the loss of a loved person or idea. The person must go through a period of mourning, usually overcoming it and returning to the condition before the loss. However, the melancholic person faces a different loss Freud: Perhaps the object is not really dead, but has been lost as an object of love. In yet other cases one feels authorized to conclude that a similar loss has been experienced, but one cannot clearly see what has gone. lost, and one can more easily assume that the patient also cannot consciously perceive what he has lost. . . this would suggest that melancholy is somehow related to the unconscious loss of a love object, as opposed to mourning, where there is nothing unconscious about the loss (155). In simpler terms, the narrator suffers the loss of a love-object (masculinity) but is not fully aware of his loss. His alter ego, however, is created for the purpose of reclaiming the love object. As a result of his loss of masculinity, the narrator experiences symptoms corresponding to those of the melancholic. He suffers from depression, insomnia, detachment from the outside world and begins to punish himself. Most important, however, is the experience of a split personality. With this understanding, Ta explains that the narrator "embodies Freud's description of the melancholic condition" (Ta 273). He continues to explain that he is in his quest for 29 (2006): 265-77.