Fight Club

Fight Club{{ref|lowercase}} (1996) is the first published novel by 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 new 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. A reissued version of the novel was published in 2004 that begins with an introduction by the author which talks about the conception and popularity of both the novel and the movie.

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 recalls on defective models if, and only if, the cost of the recall is less than the total cost of out-of-court settlements 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. Combined, these two aspects of his life disturb him to the point that they cause him to suffer from chronic insomnia.

Related Topics:
Product recall - Out-of-court settlement - 1970s - Ford Pinto's safety problems and recall - Insomnia

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At the recommendation of his doctor (who doesn't 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.

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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:

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• You do not talk about fight club.
• You do not talk about fight club.{{ref|2rules}}
• If someone says "stop," goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
• Only two guys to a fight.
• One fight at a time.
• No shirts, no shoes.
• 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.

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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 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:

Related Topics:
Corporate America - Cult

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• You do not ask questions.
• You do not 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.

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As the narrator endeavors to stop Tyler and his followers, he learns that he is Tyler{{ref|unreliable}}; 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.

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The narrator also learns that Tyler plans to blow up several buildings in the downtown area of the city using homemade bombs 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.

Related Topics:
Bomb - Martyr

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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 Project Mayhem used a bad explosives recipe. 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.

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