Chuck Palahniuk tells a highly captivating story that engulfs violence

Chuck Palahniuk tells a highly captivating story that engulfs violence

Chuck Palahniuk tells a highly captivating story that engulfs violence, drama and other intriguing aspects of the human society. The story revolves around the Narrator and Tyler Durden, who eventually turns out to be the same person with different personalities. The story opens with the Narrator and Tyler at the rooftop of Parker-Morris building where Tyler is holding a gun pointed in the mouth of the Narrator. Chuck uses flashbacks throughout the story to showcase the development of the characters to the point where they are choosing death. The Narrator is described as a young man who works as a campaign coordinator whereby he visits sites of accidents to determine whether the cause of such occurrences could be attributed to the manufacturing process and hence determines whether calling back such models could be worthwhile. His lifestyle is best described as consumer-driven as he lives in lavish condominium and has fancy furniture. Indeed he spends his time wondering on the best furniture that could best describe his personality. At the same time, the Narrator is highly dissatisfied with his lifestyle and often feels he requires a lot more to establish himself. He has insomnia from his ever-busy lifestyle of flying across the country. He seeks the companionship of help groups where he can cry empathize and have a goodnight of sleep. When the Narrator returns from a vacation, he finds his condominium had exploded and moves in with Tyler, who invites him to stay while he figured out how to get back to his former life. The time he spends with Tyler define the direction of the novel as he quits his job and starts a fight club which he believed helped him lead a more purposeful life. The paper delves into examining archetypal analysis and Jungian psychological theory to explain fictional elements of the story such as the themes that include consumerism, masculinity, aspects of death and pain, rebellion and sacrifice as well as repression and the unconscious mind.

The element of consumerism takes center stage in the entire story as the majority of the happenings are driven by the spirit of the same approach that the author associates with American society. The author uses the lives of these characters to illustrate the extent of consumerism and why the people seem unable to escape from the same. The Narrator and Tyler seem as though they have become slaves of their society as they are caught within tight schedules that seem to impact their psychological well-being. The Narrator explains that he has become an addict of purchasing sofas and other forms of furniture. Such standards reflect the social status of a rich person. The people, in this case, are engulfed in the consumerism that is only exacerbated by rigorous advertisement. People, therefore, end up purchasing products that they do not necessarily require and hence have developed an insatiable demand to become better (Cisney 1). The rich people in this society are shown to spend the majority of their fortunes on rather meaningless commodities such as mustard perfume. At the same time, the poor languish in suffering and lack of better lives. The addiction to consumerism makes the process an endless cycle of dissatisfaction regardless of the routes the characters take in life. For instance, the Narrator leaves his job to pursue the Fight Club and Project Mayhem. The two projects are created as a way to escape the harsh reality of consumerism, whereby the members can release their tension. In the end, the Narrator chooses to kill himself to avoid the suffering of dissatisfaction that he gets from his chaotic life.

The majority of the characters in the novel are men with the only exception of Marla Singer, the only female mentioned. In this case, the aspect of masculinity becomes visible, and the theme is seen throughout the different actions of the characters. Masculinity, in this case, is seen as coming from the consumerism aspect of the community whereby men are forced to lead lives lead by aspects of shopping for clothes and furniture, among other things. On the contrary, however, the men are seen as dissatisfied by the version of masculinity offered by society, and they seek different elements that define the toughness of “real men” (Fuentes 54). The fight club and Project Mayhem serve as the paths through which men can rediscover their rawness regarding masculinity. The fight clubs define real men as those willing to take the pain and can dish out similar treatment to others. Such actions can be traced to when Tyler gives the Narrator a place to stay with the condition to hit him hard as he could. Following the fight, the two men feel much better as though to signify that masculinity involves taking in the bruteness of nature and surviving the same with ease. The men in Project Mayhem have taken the subject of masculinity with great vigor and become relentless in dishing out punishment and destruction to the people. They offer to castrate the Narrator as though to indicate he was no longer masculine, especially with his consideration of ending the Fight Club and Project Mayhem (Palahniuk 198). The author explores the subject of masculinity as one in which men enjoy being tough and undergoing tumultuous experiences with courage. He also shows that at times such levels of masculinity can become destructive to oneself and the society around them as seen in how the men destroy property and loss of lives without any remorse.

The characters are actively seeking pain and death as the means to experience the real thrill of life. The people lead superficial lives that lack concrete meaning other than blindly following through with the principles of consumerisms. The Narrator, for instance, has developed insomnia and can only visit help groups to feel a moment of sadness that resonates the visceral, physical world that they lack in their ordinary lives. For instance, Marla explains to the narrator her desire to get close to death without really getting to die. It is such moments that bring people to understand the meaning of life that is more fulfilling other than living an empty existence that is only guided by the need for more purchases. The Fight Club is therefore started as a means for the people to feel real pain that brings them close to death such that they can appreciate life from a broader perspective (Carr 7). It allows the members to inflict pain on themselves and others without limits to feed their needs of filling the emptiness in their lives. Tyler exacerbates the purpose of the same by pouring lye on the hands of his recruits and also urges them to fight brutally even when they lose. He further sends them on dangerous missions of destruction to inflict pain and fear in them such that they can almost sense death. Such outcomes illustrate the aspect of death to spring in the appreciation of life and live without societal boundaries that limit the experience of life.

The novel encapsulates itself within the limits of showcasing rebellion and sacrifice of emasculated and frustrated men running away from what they perceive as an effeminized and unjust society that focuses on meaningless living. Rebellion is showcased from an individual level to rebelling against society and what it represents. The Narrator, Tyler and the men in the fighting club first rebel against themselves and the complacency they have placed upon themselves (Muhammad, Pratiwi, and Herwandar 215). They render themselves to take in pain by fighting one another. Through taking in pain they rise above their individual fears of discomfort and are now submerged in the realness of the world. They are now above the culture of shallow comfort and can overcome things by themselves. At the same time, individual rebellion is not sufficient to some of the people such as Tyler who starts Project Mayhem and recruits many people such that there were many chapters of the same spread across the nation. According to him, the members of the project had to overcome fear to the levels of sacrificing themselves for the good of the future. He nicknames them “space monkeys” which relates to the monkeys that died in space as they explored the possibility of humans living in space in future. Members of Project Mayhem rebel against the society and are involved in heinous activities that destroy property and death of innocent people. They do not accept complacency and are willing to castrate Tyler when he plans to end Project Mayhem. To this end, it becomes apparent that sacrifices and rebellion are often chosen as the unlikely ways to bring about change even when the process carries with it immeasurable consequences.

The ending twist of the novel reveals that indeed Tyler Durden and the Narrator are one person. The Narrator becomes exhausted from his normal life and unknowingly creates the character of Tyler as his alter ego through imagination which brings about the aspect of being repressed such that the unconscious mind becomes alive. The concept of the unconscious mind was first introduced by the psychologist Sigmund Freud. He argued that humans have a deep-seated unconscious mind that has its capabilities, such as emotions and desires. The aspect is, however, barely notable from the outside and that other person might have the ability to see or recognize the unconscious persona (Tsikandilakis, Myron et al. 102771). He explained that humans could only interact with the alter ego exclusively during sleep. Such alter ego characters often have more power than the actual individual and can perform duties that the actual person cannot actualize in real life. For instance, some alter egos can fly and can have other magical powers. Although in reality, the person leads a normal life, they have a different surreal experience whenever they dream with their unconscious mind. In some cases, people often indulge in altercations and other activities only to be woken up without any idea of how they committed given actions. Such individuals often explain it was a dream in which they saw themselves as other super-beings which reflects the aspect of the unconscious mind that comes to life when one falls asleep. The alter ego is often an escape route from the harsh reality of life that often repress people into thinking of themselves as incapable of the might require to drive changes.

The Narrator leads quite an empty life that follows the guidelines of consumerism and materialism and has become quite repressed as a result of the same. His life is a busy one whereby he has to travel the country performing his duties regarding the recalling of cars involved in accidents. He is also pressured by the need to buy sofas and other pieces of furniture that he hopes would define his personality. He, however, fails to find any satisfaction in this way of life and is, therefore repressed with regards to attaining the full fulfilment of life. He is emasculated in an effeminized society that does not consider the aspects that define masculinity or other things that make life complete. These emotions of repression build up within the Narrator, and they eventually spring to life in the form of Tyler his alter ego. Tyler is described as being daring, charming, confident aggressive among many other qualities. The alter ego is masculine and relishes in taking and dishing out pain to other people. He even establishes Fight Club and Project Mayhem. The latter causes adverse destruction of property through their dangerous missions as well as causing death. Tyler forms a formidable gang that is above consumerism and the shallow culture and seeks to bring about permanent change by forcing everyone who was on their side. Their acts of violence only show the degree of repression in the narrator and uses the alter ego to let out the steam. Although in some cases, both the Narrator and Taylor appear to be in the same place, they never see each other, which shows the aspect of unconscious mind only existing within the thinking of an individual. The author successfully shows that given the pressures of society in the country, many young men could have such alter egos which help them vent out some of the tension out. Although the alter ego causes the Narrator to shoot himself, it plays a massive role in bringing him to rise above the context of his society to one where he has control and can initiate and implement changes.

Concluding, the archetypal analysis and Jungian psychological theory help bring out a deeper meaning of the Fight Club. The story which is told using a lot of flashbacks gain s a more profound understanding, and the message of the writer becomes more apparent. The Narrator represents the reality of many young men who find themselves caught up in the materialism and consumerism aspects of society. They become like robots that function to achieve specific objectives but have no authority to bring about substantial changes in their world. The author shows that delving into the unconscious can bring about benefits to the individual while the same can result in a disastrous outcome. The unconscious self helps the individual see the world from a broader perspective and can help escape from the repression of the world doctrines