Information AboutFight Club |
''Fight Club'' ( 1996 ) is the first published Novel by America n Author Chuck Palahniuk . The plot is based around an unnamed Protagonist who struggles with his growing discomfort with Consumerism and changes in the state of Masculinity in American Culture . In an attempt to overcome this, he creates an underground Boxing club as a radical form of Therapy . The novel was made into a Movie Of The Same Name in 1999 by director David Fincher , which resulted in the story becoming a pop culture phenomenon. In its popularity, the novel has become a target of criticism, mainly for its explicit depictions of violence. HISTORY When Palahniuk made his first attempt at publishing a novel ('' Invisible Monsters '') publishers rejected it for being too disturbing. This led him to work on ''Fight Club'', which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him. Palahniuk wrote this story in between working while on the job for Freightliner . After initially publishing it as a short story (which became chapter 6 of the novel) in the compilation ''Pursuit of Happiness'', Palahniuk expanded it into a full novel, which, contrary to what he expected, the publisher was willing to publish. While the original, hardcover edition of the book received positive reviews and some awards, it had a short shelf life. Nevertheless, the book had made its way to Hollywood , where interest in adapting it to film was growing. It was eventually adapted in 1999 by screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher. The film was a box office disappointment (although it was #1 at the U.S. box office in its first weekend) and critical reaction was mixed, but a Cult Following soon emerged as the DVD of the film was popular upon release (with some critics changing their opinions on it as a result of the DVD). As a result of the film, the original hardcover edition became a collector's item. Two paperback rereleases of the novel, one in 1999 and the other in 2004 (the latter of which begins with an introduction by the author about the conception and popularity of both the novel and the movie), were later made. This success helped launch Palahniuk's career as a popular Novelist , as well as establish a writing style that would appear in all later books by the author. Despite popular belief, Palahniuk was not inspired to write the novel by any actual fight club. The club itself was based on a series of Fight s that Palahniuk got into over previous years (most notably one that he got into during a Camping trip). Even though he has mentioned this in many interviews, Palahniuk is still often approached by fans wanting to know where their local fight club takes place. Palahniuk insists that there is no real, singular organization like the one in his book. He does admit however that some fans have mentioned to him that some fight clubs (albeit much smaller than the one in the novel) exist or previously existed (some having existed long before the novel was written). Many other events in the novel were also based on events that Palahniuk himself had experienced. The Support Groups that the narrator attends are based on support groups that the author brought terminally ill people to as part of a volunteer job he did for a local hospice. Project Mayhem is loosely based on the Cacophony Society , of which Palahniuk is a member. Various events and characters are based on friends of the author. Other events came as a result of stories told to him by various people he had talked to. This method of combining various stories from various people into novels has become a common way of writing novels for Palahniuk ever since. Outside of Palahniuk's professional and personal life, the novel's impact has been felt elsewhere. Several individuals in various locations of the '', as well as in the introduction to the 2004 paperback edition of ''Fight Club''. Other fans of the book have been inspired to non-anti-social activity as well; Palahniuk has claimed that fans tell him that they have been inspired to go back to college after reading the book. Other than the film, a few other adaptations have been attempted. In 2004 ''Fight Club'' was in development as a Musical , developed by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor . Brad Pitt , who played the role of Tyler Durden in the film, expressed interest in being involved. A video game loosely based on the film was published by Vivendi Universal Games in 2004, receiving poor reviews from gaming critics. PLOT SYNOPSIS The book centers around a nameless narrator who hates his job and the way his life currently is. The narrator works for an unnamed car company, organizing Product Recall s on defective models if, and only if, the cost of the Recall is less than the total cost of Out-of-court Settlement s paid to relatives of the deceased (which parallels the 1970s story of the Ford Pinto's Safety Problems And Recall ). At the same time, he is becoming disenchanted with a "nesting instinct" of consumerism that has absorbed his life, causing him to define himself as a person based on the furniture, clothes, and other material objects that he owns. These aspects of his life, combined with frequent trips across multiple time zones (due to his job) disturb him to the point that they cause him to suffer from chronic Insomnia . At the recommendation of his doctor (who does not consider his insomnia to be a serious ailment), the narrator goes to a support group for men with Testicular Cancer to "see what real suffering is like". After finding that crying at these support groups and listening to emotional outpourings from suffering individuals allows him to sleep at night, he becomes addicted to attending them. At the same time, he befriends a cancer victim named Bob. Although he does not really suffer from any of the ailments that the other attendants have, he is never caught being a "tourist" until he meets Marla Singer, a woman who also attends support groups without needing them for their original purpose. Her presence "reflects" the narrator's "tourism", and only reminds him that he doesn't belong at the support groups. This causes him to be unable to cry and consequently causes him to hate Marla. As a result of both of these factors, the narrator is once again unable to control his insomnia. After a short confrontation between the two, they begin going to separate support groups in order to avoid bumping into each other again. Shortly before this incident, his life changes radically after meeting Tyler Durden, a beach artist who works low-paying jobs at night in order to perform deviant behavior on the job. After his confrontation with Marla, the narrator's condo is destroyed by an explosion and he asks Tyler if he can stay at his place. Tyler agrees, but asks for one favor: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can." The resulting fight in a bar's parking lot attracts more disenchanted males, and a new form of support group, the first "fight club", is born. The fight club becomes a new type of therapy through Bare-knuckle fighting, controlled by a set of eight rules: #You don't talk about fight club. #You don't talk about fight club. #If someone says stop, goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over. #Only two guys to a fight. #One fight at a time. #They fight without shirts or shoes. #The fights go on as long as they have to. #If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight. Meanwhile, Tyler rescues Marla from a suicide attempt and the two initiate an affair that confounds the narrator. Throughout this affair, Marla is mostly unaware of the existence of fight club, and completely unaware of Tyler and the narrator's interaction with one another. As the fight club's membership grows (and, unbeknownst to the narrator, spreads to other cities across the country), Tyler begins to use it to spread anti-consumerist ideas and recruits its members to participate in increasingly elaborate attacks on Corporate America . This was originally the narrator's idea, but Tyler eventually takes control from him. Tyler eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members (referred to as "space monkeys") and forms "Project Mayhem", a Cult -like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization. This organization, like the fight club, is controlled by a set of rules: #You don't ask questions. #You don't ask questions. #No excuses. #No lies. #You have to trust Tyler. The narrator starts off as a loyal participant in Project Mayhem, seeing it as the next step for fight club. However, he becomes uncomfortable with the increasing destructiveness of their activities after it results in the death of Bob. As the narrator endeavors to stop Tyler and his followers, he learns that he ''is'' Tyler; Tyler is not a separate person, but a Separate Personality . As the narrator struggled with his hatred for his job and his consumerist lifestyle, his mind began to form a new personality that was able to escape from the problems of his normal life. The final straw in causing his mind to snap came when he met Marla; Tyler was truly born as a distinct personality when the narrator's unconscious desire to be with Marla clashed with his conscious hatred for her. Having come to the surface, Tyler's personality has been slowly taking over the narrator's mind, which he planned to take over completely by making the narrator's real personality more like his. The narrator's previous cases of insomnia had actually been Tyler's personality surfacing; Tyler would be active whenever the narrator was "sleeping". This allowed Tyler to manipulate the narrator into helping him create fight club; Tyler learned recipes for creating explosives when he was in control, and used this knowledge to blow up his condo. The narrator also learns that Tyler plans to blow up several buildings in the downtown area of the city using homemade Bomb s created by Project Mayhem. During these explosions, he plans to die as a Martyr for Project Mayhem, consequently taking the narrator's life with his. Realizing this, the narrator sets out to stop Tyler, despite the fact that Tyler is always thinking ahead of him. In his attempts to stop this, he makes peace with Marla (who now considers the narrator to be her boyfriend) and explains to her that he is not Tyler Durden. He is eventually forced by Tyler to confront him on the roof of the tallest building in the city, which is about to be destroyed along with the other buildings that Project Mayhem has targeted. There, the narrator manages to convince Tyler that he has no control over him anymore and that he will be the only one making decisions for himself from now on. This causes his hallucinations of Tyler to stop, ridding the narrator of his second personality for good. With Tyler gone, the narrator waits for the bombs to explode and kill him. However, the bombs turn out to be duds due to the fact that Tyler used the paraffin recipe, which never worked for the narrator, and thus Tyler as well. Still alive and holding the gun that Tyler used to carry on him, the narrator decides to make the first decision that is truly his own: he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots himself. Some time later, he awakens in a mental institution, though he believes that he is dead and has gone to heaven. From there, he gets regular visits from Marla, who still cares for him. The book ends with members of Project Mayhem who work at the institution telling the narrator that their plans to change civilization as we know it are continuing to go through, and that they are expecting Tyler to make a return. CHARACTERS
MOTIFS At two points in the novel, the narrator claims he wants to "wipe {Link without Title} ass with the '' Mona Lisa ''"; a mechanic who joins fight club also repeats this to him in one scene. This Motif shows his want for chaos, later explicitly expressed in his want to "destroy something beautiful". Additionally, he mentions at one point that "Nothing is static. Even the ''Mona Lisa'' is falling apart." University of Calgary literary scholar Paul Kennett claims that this want for chaos is a result of an Oedipal Complex , as the narrator, Tyler, and the mechanic all show disdain for their fathers. This is most explicitly stated in the scene that the mechanic appears in:
|
|
|