As Kevin Alexander Boon has said, Fight Club is a novel about ‘the relationship between men and violence’[1], where violence is used both as an escape from and as a combatant to capitalism. Due to a shift occurring sometime in the late-twentieth century that put a great importance on economic stability in relation to personal worth and happiness, our perception of manliness has since changed into something that can be considered much ‘softer’ to our previous ideals. Consumerism, and the idea that we must own the newest things to be considered respectable members of society, has ‘feminized’[2] men, with the protagonist of the story being the example of the ‘everyman’ – he is, until his grandiose attempts to break away from the capitalist society, trapped in his ‘lovely nest’[3] of the things society has deemed right and perfect for him to own. It is almost like the protagonist (referred to as ‘Jack’ from this point) is living in a world of simulacra – he exists in a world which is the projection of perfection, and yet he is not content until he gives in to his primal instinct, his violent tendencies – ‘Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy’[4]. To quote Lynn M. Ta, ‘Fight Club is the story of an individual who must torture himself into manhood’[5].
The society presented to us in the novel is based on a culture that has ‘reduced masculinity to a mere accessory that can increase a man’s manliness as long as he literally buys into the market’[6]. While being involved in business and the economy is, traditionally, a male activity, the novel presents us with the idea that Jack’s loss of masculinity can be directly linked to his ‘participation in capitalism’[7]. Ironically enough, the development of Project Mayhem results in the ‘same effects of capitalism’ being reproduced ‘by creating the illusion of freedom through demands for self-regulation and self-punishment’[8]. While Tyler feels like he is liberating his peers and followers by giving them orders that break outside of society’s norms, he is also planting in them the desire to act as they did before – follow orders, blindly, without question, to please a higher power (in this case, Tyler; previously, society).
Jack, before actively conceiving the idea of Tyler Durden, is a man who attends support meetings for those who has been medically castrated due to testicular cancer. He is, effectively, ‘a man acting as if he has no balls’[9], surrounded by men who actively ‘cradl[e their] inner child’[10] during support group meetings, a practice normally associated with a more feminine audience. The men are encouraged to hug, during a portion of the meeting specifically dedicated to that very practice – ‘therapeutic physical contact’[11], that encouraged crying during. Jack uses these moments of openness to, presumably, get rid of negative emotions that are preventing him from sleep. By connecting with something other than masculinity, he is able to rest and feel more comfortable in the role in society that he inhabits. However, once Jack encounters Tyler, he is plunged into a world full of a controlled kind of violence – a violence that ‘exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends’[12]. It is ‘the brutal immediacy of destruction, […] the brutal immediacy of the individual combat’[13]. While Jack admits that he is a different person, able to separate his two personalities – ‘Who I am in fight club is not someone my boss knows’[14] – the loss of his material possessions is immediately punctuated by his entrance into Tyler’s world: barely any possessions, dank living conditions, and a new vigor for life that exists beyond his job and financial situation. With the introduction of fight club into his life, Jack starts to get in touch further with his primal instincts (which will be further explored in later paragraphs). In fact, it is within fight club that Jack finds the capacity within himself to destroy, something which Tyler comments on after his fight with the boy deemed ‘beautiful mister angel face’ – ‘Tyler told me later he’d never seen me destroy something so completely’[15].
Fight club gives its members the ability to express their pent up anger and frustration with the consumerist world around them in an environment where it is socially acceptable to. In a world that has been labelled civilized, ‘violence has been lumped with misogyny and homophobia’[16], making it an undesirable quality to have, and something that must be curbed in favour of other methods of venting. In Jack’s case, this becomes the joining of support groups as a form of catharsis. By giving its members a way to express this frustration, fight club becomes a form of support club, and Tyler becomes a sort of father figure to the men who choose to follow him so closely. ‘What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women’[17], a generation of men who were born into consumer capitalism, and have been taught that they must be more feminine to be accepted within social norms. Because of this, the men are ‘thrust into a gender limbo that places their identity in crisis’[18] – they are expected to act like men, but only if they do not succumb to behavior that is, historically, linked to men; in the meanwhile, they must still be providers, protectors, and of considerable strength, otherwise they would not be deemed proper men. To refer back to Boon,
‘the characterization of […] a typical man now carries with it the inflection of a slur, which 60 years ago was not the case – yet still expects men to perform the same tasks they have been asked to for millennia: protection of the home and family, expansion and growth of the community, and defense of the nation, all of which demand an ability to act with aggression’[19]
The act of society imposing a new form of masculinity on the men of the late-twentieth century can be seen as a form of metaphorical castration – in fact, ‘Jack’s fear of castration is alleviated in the presence of men who have undergone actual castration’[20]. This links back to the feeling of catharsis that Jack experiences, as he feels more like a man amongst men who are not biologically men anymore (technically), even though he lives in a world where the definition of manliness has changed, a world that has ‘pushed […] masculinity to the margins’[21]. Lynn M. Ta explains this phenomenon through the ‘revisioning’ done by the ‘1960s Civil Rights, feminists, and gay and lesbian movements’, which have led ‘white men to increasingly imagine themselves as victims of the system in light of these advances made by marginalized groups’[22].
The concept of castration features heavily in the novel as a form of submission, as it is later used by Project Mayhem to strike fear into its enemies – ‘“We have him by the balls now.”’[23] says Tyler about the police commissioner, who was threatened with castration by members of Project Mayhem who ‘had everything [to lose]’[24]. This direct link between the commissioner’s manhood and his position in the political sphere shows how highly esteemed manliness is, however different from the traditional idea of manliness it is. Later, it is Jack who is threatened with castration, after he tries to shut down a chapter of fight club. We know that Jack’s other personality, Tyler, told his followers to ‘get him by the nuts’[25] should this ever happen. Therefore, ‘the choice to escape this world’, as Jack tries to do when he realizes how far Project Mayhem is going, ‘is the choice of castration’[26].
The fear of castration is not uncommon in the male psyche, and was in fact brought to the forefront of psychology by Sigmund Freud with his theory on oedipal struggles. One of the stages of the Oedipus Complex involves a literal ‘fear of castration’ from the child’s perspective, where the young boy fears that his father will take away his penis if he expresses any sort of attraction towards his mother. However, interestingly enough, Jack does not know his father very well – ‘I knew my dad for about six years, but I don’t remember anything’[27]. Jack’s lack of a father figure is mirrored in the other men at fight club, the ‘generation of men raised by women’. While this could take on a metaphorical meaning, being that the men of fight club are men who are raised in a more feminine society with more feminine expectations, it can also mean that they, quite literally, do not know their fathers. ‘Tyler never knew his father’[28] shows us an element of solidarity with Jack; (one of) Project’s Mayhem’s mantras becomes the wish to grab God’s attention, like a child trying to get its father to notice something they’re doing – ‘We are God’s middle children […] with no special place in history and no special attention’[29]. Even the way of referring to themselves, as ‘God’s middle children’, shows the replacement of the classical father figure with an unreachable, intangible concept that not all the members of Project Mayhem necessarily believe in. ‘If you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God’[30], but without a father to model this on, God becomes an abstract concept, but something to strive towards anyway.
In Jack’s case, he finds the masculinity that his father could not give him in Tyler, who is ‘the animus, the male within the feminized narrator’[31]. ‘Tyler assumes the mantle of the absent father and the responsibility of leading others to manhood’[32] with his invention of fight club and, later, Project Mayhem, and his methods of indoctrination that even involve an initiation process (the scar left by the lye on every member’s hand). In fact, there comes a point where the narrator indirectly refers to Tyler as his father: ‘I am Joe’s Broken Heart because Tyler’s dumped me. Because my father dumped me.’[33] The narrator, in fact, ‘search[es] out [a] more masculine, but divergent, male personae to achieve [his] ultimate successes’[34].
Tyler is everything that the narrator wishes he could be, and wishes he could project onto the world. In the film adaptation of the novel, this is brought out beautifully by the deterioration of Jack, as Tyler becomes more fleshed out – stronger, better looking than Jack, even more tanned, while Jack is pale, sickly, and small compared to his alter ego. While this also shows Tyler taking on a larger portion of Jack’s life (including the control of his body and his mental presence), it is also an idolization of Tyler – he is ‘the manifestation of idealized masculinity’[35]. Tyler wishes to bring the world back to what he perceives as its former glory – what he calls a ‘cultural ice age. A prematurely induced dark age’[36]. By doing this, manhood would be restored to its previous definition – the strength and violence brought about to exert dominance, to hunt, and to show off power.
‘You’ll hunt elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center, and dig clams next to the skeleton of the Space Needle leaning at a forty-five degree angle. We’ll pain the skyscrapers with huge totem faces and goblin tikis, and every evening what’s left of mankind will retreat to empty zoos and lock itself in cages as protection against bears and big cats and wolves that pace and watch us from outside the cage bars at night.’[37]
The act of caging oneself in, with the reversal of the roles at the zoo, shows the way that Tyler wishes man would revert back to a more primal existence, yet still maintaining the intelligence and resources of the modern world (‘“you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life”’[38]). As Lynn M. Ta puts it, ‘it is difficult for […] men to rage against the machine when they themselves are the creators of that very machine’[39]. Tyler’s answer, therefore, to the society they are trapped in, is to ‘destroy the culture that threatens manhood’[40]. By doing this, Tyler is bringing out the animus part of the human unconscious, rather than that anima (as society has been doing with the feminization of men through consumerism). In fact, we can view the novel in terms of archetypes – Tyler is a ‘Rebel’, who’s mission it is to disrupt, destroy, or shock the world into a new beginning, as well as a ‘Magician’, who envisions a new world and strives to achieve it.[41] By creating this new world of freedom and masculine expression, Tyler is allowing everybody else, especially the members of fight club and Project Mayhem, to exert this part of their personality as well. By taking on this responsibility of creating a new world, Tyler is acting very much like the Old Testament God – an all-powerful being who does not think twice about flooding the entire world so that it can start anew. Tyler has no qualms with destroying the very basis of civilization (‘I wanted to burn the Louvre. I’d do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa’[42]) and progress so that he can start a new world from scratch, and in this way, Tyler becomes a figure to both replace the God/Father Figure that the twentieth-century male wants in his life, and also a figure who is turned into a myth. He is the perfect example of what men could be like, and in a society that has been taken over by consumerism and given up certain traditional perceptions of masculinity, he is nothing but a myth.
In the first chapter, Tyler tells the narrator that they ‘“won’t really die […] [they]’ll be legend. [They] won’t grow old.”’[43], and even though Jack reiterates that they are not vampires, Tyler is here echoing the want to be remembered as a legend, to experience immortality through recognition – ‘the immortality sought by Gilgamesh and the ancient Greek heroes, such as Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon’[44]. This is, generally, a wish attributed to the heroes of old, who were, for the most part, male. By echoing this, Tyler/Jack shows his dissatisfaction with modern society, and his desire to be something more than what society expects of him – a man who does not conform to expectations, but rather breaks them and creates new ones. He is a man who starts off feminized, but ends the novel as a man who sees beyond the hyper-reality of the world on the verge of the twenty-first century, and wants something beyond it. Whether the use of violence, as Tyler uses it, is a suitable plan of action, is another matter.
Bibliography
Boon, Kevin Alexander, “Men and Nostalgia for Violence: Culture and Culpability in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club”, Journal of Men’s Studies, 11.3 (2003), < http://search.proquest.com/docview/222636836?accountid-27934 > [accessed 29 Jan 2016]
Palahniuk, Chuck, Fight Club, (London: Vintage, 2006)
Ta, Lynn M., “Hurts So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence and the Crisis of Capitalism”, The Journal of American Culture, 29.3 (2006), pp. 265-277
Tuss, Alex, “Masculine Identity and Success: A Critical Analysis of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club”, Journal of Men’s Studies, 12 (2004), pp. 93-102
[1] Kevin Alexander Boon, “Men and Nostalgia for Violence: Culture and Culpability in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.” Journal of Men’s Studies, 11.3 (2003), < http://search.proquest.com/docview/222636836?accountid=27934 > [accessed 29 Jan 2016] (p. 1).
[2] Ibid., p. 6.
[3] Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, (London: Vintage, 2006), p. 44.
[4] Ibid., p. 21.
[5] Lynn M. Ta, “Hurts So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence and the Crisis of Capitalism”, The Journal of American Culture, 29.3 (2006), pp. 265-277 (p. 267).
[6] Lynn M. Ta, p. 273.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., p. 267
[9] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 7.
[10] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 23.
[11] Ibid., p. 20.
[12] Ibid., p. 48.
[13] Alex Tuss, “Masculine Identity and Success: A Critical Analysis of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club”, Journal of Men’s Studies, 12 (2004) pp. 93-102 (p. 97).
[14] Ibid., p. 49.
[15] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 123.
[16] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 5.
[17] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 50.
[18] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 6.
[19] Ibid., pp. 3-4.
[20] Lynn M. Ta, p. 270.
[21] Ibid., p. 269.
[22] Ibid., p. 266.
[23] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 163.
[24] Ibid. p, 165.
[25] Ibid., p. 187.
[26] Lynn M. Ta, p. 270.
[27] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 50.
[28] Ibid., p. 49
[29] Ibid., p. 141.
[30] Ibid., p. 186.
[31] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 7.
[32] Ibid., p. 8.
[33] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 134.
[34] Alex Tuss, p. 96.
[35] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 7.
[36] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 125.
[37] Ibid., p. 124.
[38] Ibid., p. 125.
[39] Lynn M. Ta, p. 275.
[40] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 8.
[41] Carl Golden, The 12 Common Archetypes < http://www.soulcraft.co/essays/the_12_common_archetypes.html > [accessed 2nd Feb 2015].
[42] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 124
[43] Chuck Palahniuk, p. 11.
[44] Kevin Alexander Boon, p. 9.
Of Scripted Shadows and Painted Words 