God's Middle Children of History

Mischief. Mayhem. Soap.

Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel “Fight Club” has become a milestone in American literature and culture. Regarding “Fight Club” and Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis commented, “our generation has finally found its Don DeLillo”. The book’s adaptation to film by Dave Fincher in 1999 starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, creating something intangible in its greatness. It has been called “the first movie of the 21st Century”. However, just as many artists are overlooked in their own time, to a degree, so was “Fight Club”. To date it has only made $37,000,000 gross at the box office and cost around $63,000,000 to make. It was berated as a film with excessive violence, sending the wrong messages to our children. In reality the film is a lot less violent than the book and Fincher made several alterations to create a more ‘Hollywood’ friendly version of the story. In this essay I shall analyse the book with brief explorations into the film adaptation.

The film and novel are extremely similar. In many parts the narrative is transposed verbatim. Unusually, the cardinal narrative functions of the book are all transferred perfectly from one medium to the other. In one sense they are very basic. A man has a problem, man finds solace in a friend and the friend takes an ideology to the extreme, creating a terrorist organisation. The terrorists are not stopped. The last line suggests there has been no resolution, which is essential to the story. This could happen. Although this is a work of fiction, Palahniuk has motive behind his writing. It is to scare, to inform and to warn people about the risk of alienating groups of potentially powerful people. Tyler’s main argument is that we are “God’s middle children of history” we have no Great War or Great Depression; God has forgotten about us, he doesn’t like us. The warning is that in such a society we are vulnerable. Palahniuk points out that commercialism and materialism stem from the fact that we have nothing with which to define ourselves so instead “we work jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need”. “Fight Club” is an apocalyptic novel examining the evolution of the 21st Century man. The main character is never referred to by name. He is to represent every emasculated twenty-something male in America today. He is nobody and he is everybody. He is a “by-product of a lifestyle obsession”.

“Self-improvement is masturbation. Maybe self-destruction is the answer”.

The idea of “Fight Club” is to hit rock bottom; that in losing everything we will be set free. Fincher adds the line, “you have to know, not fear, that some day you are going to die” to the film adaptation. Tyler preaches this as he holds the Narrator’s hand still, burning it with lye. He wants the Narrator to embrace the pain. The pain will set you free. The story is thus one of the power of enlightenment. It is a tale of a new kind of class struggle, a struggle that is being born among western cultures across the globe. Yet, the message beneath the surface highlights the limitations and dangers of such powers. Tyler is a monster. He is the psychopathic alter ego of a shell of a man. A psychopath who believes the way forward is through terror and chaos. Amidst the populist anti-commercialism propaganda put forth by Palahniuk, reinforced by Tyler’s charismatic ambience, the reader starts to almost believe in Tyler’s cause. Our role, however, as the reader, is to not get drawn in by this, but to stand at a distance and observe. We are to pass judgement on events only in retrospect and only by focussing on the story as a whole and not its intimate details. Without knowing the end we cannot begin to understand the beginning. Once it is clear that Tyler is the Narrator’s alternate personality, we can then start to see that the dangers of disenfranchising any class are still apparent today’s world. We must then look at the development of the Narrator throughout the story. How he is able to grow into such a dangerous and powerful person.

The only other really interesting character is Marla Singer. In the book she works as a great contrast to the Narrator. At the beginning both Marla and the Narrator attend support groups to help them confront their daemons. However, the Narrator isn’t satisfied. He creates an alternative identity for himself and starts up “Fight Club”. Marla however continues to go to the meetings. This could be seen as a comment on modern men and women in American culture. The Narrator cannot settle for the support groups whilst Marla can. He and all the other men in the story are fighting for a purpose in this world, their own Great War, this self-destruction, their “great war of the spirit”. Marla however just wants to be loved. She goes to support groups because she feels that there is nothing good in her life. She is generally depressed. All she wants is a man. The Narrator doesn’t need another woman. He’s part of a “generation of men raised by women” how could another woman really be the answer? The responsibility for the whole experience is laid upon Marla’s lap. “This all started with Marla Singer”. Interestingly, in both mediums the Narrator is shown holding hands with Marla at the end. Palahniuk may be trying to say that after everything lonely men aren’t any different from lonely women. They are just people. Marla doesn’t find solace in a cult but she still hurts. “Marla’s heart looked the way my face was. The crap and the trash of the world”. However, she finds comfort in people, and tries to hold onto it. Eventually she finds security and protection in the Narrator as everything comes crumbling down.

The high profile of anti-commercialism in “Fight Club” means that it is easy to lose one’s self in the midst of an inane, routine diatribe, yet that is to make a horrendous error. Attacking commercialism and materialism is the role of the characters not Palahniuk himself – or for that fact the reader’s. The mistake is made due to Palahniuk’s style of writing. A disenfranchised, lonely and desperate man takes the form of the Narrator. He, like the other members of what is to become Fight Club, are literally calling out for help – for meaning in their lives of triviality. Thus, when Palahniuk introduces the saviour character of Tyler Durden to this story, we are also convinced by his apparent brilliance. The charming revolutionary attitude that draws the Narrator closer to Tyler pulls the reader in as well. The book is littered with preaching and propaganda. From the first chapter in fact we are attacked by information taken straight out of the “Jolly Roger’s Cook Book*”.

Both Palahniuk’s style and language are, in fact, extremely interesting. The language is almost ecclesiastical at times. Tyler’s speech is similar to that of a prophet or some other religious leader. Correspondingly, the Narrator’s is, at times, that of the disciple. At the end of chapter five, after just meeting Tyler he declares, “Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete”. Although at almost total contrast with most religious teaching, this sentence takes on a familiar Christian form. Merely five pages on there is another link to religion. The more you delve into the intricacies of “Fight Club” the clearer it becomes that this book does not intend only to make you think about consumerism. It intends to analyse people, how we behave, how we interact… what we do when we’re lost. The machismo filled, anti-Starbucks, action-adventure story you thought you were reading slowly disintegrates before your eyes. Palahniuk’s description of men who attend “Fight Club” are men who “look[s] carved out of wood”. During fights “[t]here’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved”. “Fight Club” is presented as a Church of fake idols and false hope. The reader, in hindsight, knows that the Fight Club member’s feelings are misguided. They are nothing more than members of a malicious, subtlety created cult.

Another point about Palahniuk’s writing concerns his fascinating use of stream of consciousness prose. The Narrator’s dialogue is vastly enhanced by this technique. Its fast, sporadic, fragmentary nature adds depth and a sense of the unknown to the dialogue. As the Narrator becomes increasingly schizophrenic, Palahniuk’s style echoes the progression beautifully. In particular, Palahniuk utilises this style in the chapter’s after the Narrator has realised he is Tyler. Chapter’s twenty-one to twenty-six take up less than thirty pages. Palahniuk races through the chapters as the Narrator’s mind races through everything that has happened. Palahniuk’s style reflects the Narrator’s fight to understand the true reality of the situation. Fragmented sentences follow apocalyptic tangents of suicide, self-sacrifice and the Narrator’s desperation to be free of Tyler. The lines become shorter and more concise to add pace to the story and each is paragraphed separately creating a disjointed rhythm. Alongside the context of the story these literary tools create great tension and suspense within the narrative. The reader is thus brought closer in to the world of the schizophrenic by having the story told so atypically. The Narrator’s language in the final chapters is no longer that of the disciple. The anti-consumerist ideology and revolutionary goals disappear once the Narrator realises what he’s done. Tyler becomes the “perfection” he vowed he would destroy. He becomes the perfectly flawed and disillusioned male. He is “sitting in the palm of perfection he’d made himself”. Like many revolutionaries he has taken an ideal to the extreme and bastardised it. Yes one can sympathise with the gravity of the problem of consumerism and globalisation but there are limits. Terrorism as a form of propaganda and political canvassing can never be seen as just. Violence has no role in politics.

“Fight Club” can be seen as an existentialist thought experiment. It is the visualisation of the idea that existence precedes essence. Sartre said that a man “first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards (Flew, 1995)”. In “Fight Club” we see the Narrator exit himself and encounter himself in a different form as Tyler and then surge up to the head of an army. However, when he comes to define himself later on he does not like what he sees. He has allowed the stronger, better-looking, more confident version of himself to go too far. He permits him to take advantage of those too easily influenced by aspirations of grandeur and a place in history. Thus, “Fight Club” could be seen as an example of existentialism gone awry. If existence comes before essence then we ourselves are wholly responsible for our actions. As Sartre said, existentialism puts each man “in possession of himself as he is (Flew, 1995)”. So the problem will always arise that if we are to act now and define ourselves later we will always run the risk of not liking who we end up as. In the extreme world of Palahniuk we may even end up with a split personality and the head of one of the most powerful terrorist organisations ever made. The Narrator was blinded by his need to matter, his need to be worth something. So much was his vision impaired that he ended up as a tyrant, a dictator in charge of a whole army. Many have said that “Fight Club” is in fact a neo-nazi vision of the future. Each “space monkey” member of Project Mayhem has a shaved head and dresses all in black… it doesn’t seem too far-fetched.

However, this link is a little more tenuous in the film than the book for the book is far more violent. As it develops, the violence intensifies. In the book the Narrator fights fifty people one night with the hope of being killed and the language is sickeningly graphic. The film received an 18-rating in the UK even though Fincher had toned down some of the more striking fight scenes. The Narrator has a hole in his cheek that won’t ever heal because of fighting and his “teeth snap off and plant their jagged roots into my tongue”. In his third fight of the night his opponent,

“hammers my face with the pounding molar of his clenched fist.
Until my teeth bite through the inside of my cheek.
Until the hole in my cheek meets the corner of my mouth, the two run together into a ragged leer that opens from under my nose to under my ear”.

The language is cold and mechanical. Words such as “hammers” and “pounding” imply great force and thus great pain. Fincher manages to imitate such language with a great use of sound in the film. Dull slaps and thuds fill the fight scenes of the film as they fight on hard concrete floors. However, although there is a lot of blood and the sounds are almost as gruesome as the visuals, it is not as shocking as when reading the book. Fincher put less emphasis on the depiction of the actual violence for shock purposes and it works well in the film. It was portrayed as a Clockwork Orange style film with violence for violence sake by the media as it was. If Fincher had included shots of teeth going through cheeks then all the focus would have been lost. Fincher found a clever middle ground to hold the film’s morals and focus in place. Palahniuk however does use shocking imagery but as a novel is a less direct and obvious medium it was able to pass under the radar of ‘political correctness’. In addition, Fincher’s “Fight Club” is a very different world in some respects. Project Mayhem doesn’t kill anyone in the film. The book mentions at least two specific murders and there is the implication of more. In the film they scare the lead detective trying to close down fight clubs but Tyler murders him in the book, along with his own boss. The story ends with the Narrator shooting himself in the face. The reader is left wondering whether he actually committed suicide or not. Palahniuk leaves the novel open just enough to incite discussion and thought. Did the Narrator win and destroy Tyler? Did the Narrator survive? Is the last chapter set in hospital or the afterlife? Did Tyler win? He got his story told. “Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?”

Many believe “Fight Club” to be a modern masterpiece, thwarted by today’s society’s necessity to desensitise people and censor art. It raises some very interesting questions about the state of modern America, its consumer culture and where it will lead. Most importantly it asks where the next social revolution will come from and what will be its agenda? Tyler wanted to erase all debt so that we all go back to zero and thus start again. Equality. Karl Marx predicted such a revolution would one day come, eliminate class boundaries and cause the end of history. Perhaps it is consumer culture that is to be the gravedigger of our society. Perhaps there is some other issue brewing that will unite the masses. Maybe we should have listened more carefully to the true message of "Fight Club", not its violence, but its message. It could come from anywhere… it could take any form.


Bibliography

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. London. Vintage, 1997.

Fight Club. Available from: [accessed: 12/05/05]

Dzilna Dzintars. Fight Club: Violence as Yoga. Available from: 12/08/04 [accessed 12/05/05]


Copyright Liam Andrew Wright 2009