Introduction The paper will explore the model of male emotion and expressions as expressed in the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. The review will mainly focus on Tyler's statement, "we're a generation of men raised by women" and the statement's effect on the men who joined the club. Throughout history, men are expected to temper their feelings and channel into workplace competition. The fight club is one of the places where they earn money and the fight club puts them to work despite broken bones and torn flesh.
As always, men are required to put a 'manly' face to grin and bear it. They need to stand up and be proud. "What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women", by this statement it means that men are required to be hard and vicious and still go home to the warmth of a woman's tender embrace. But this is a fight club. Incontrollable men beat each other into mere pulp pieces acting like animals before they return back to their normal mundane jobs and the stereotypical life styles with their families. What lies behind the club though is terrible that it can blow all away (Foley, S.
W. 2008). The book speaks to the people who have lost themselves in the modern society, who feel apart and unwanted despite all the paths on their way. It is an impotent anarchic scream for the modern man.
This is a male identity crisis. So many events have happened in history to result in men having difficulties coming to terms with being men. Female emancipation, sexual revolution, role reversals and single parent families that have been intrinsically bad and the book seems to have created the aforementioned crisis. Then, who are our male role models? Do real men care about getting wet, no need for the umbrella when it is raining. Do real men wear suits? Much has been lost as men veer off from nature and place in society. The author combines some manly terse prose and apocalyptic vision.
Palahniuk gives some good insights and its unabashed masculinity. The narrator decided to combat insomnia; by going to different therapy groups before starting the fight club e.g. brain parasites, tuberculosis, and deenerative bone disease. He had undergone real pain and insomnia meant nothing to him.
However fight club gave the narrator a new kind of release. During the day he and some members would gather in basements of bars and many other places, they would do what they do best and what people like they would fight. Tyler Durden being the one who is closest to Nietzsche's ubermench, who they say is in control and who has the total power. The narrator leaves fight club and notices that after only a night in fight club your word is the law and if anybody annoys you, you can't get mad. Fight gave the narrator what he had lost like his possessions, condor. But he was free and he gives the best advice saying when you loose everything you feel like doing almost anything (Bergin, M.
S. 2006).Palahniuk also looks at Tyler Durden's random jobs, in his work he takes whatever is pure and spits on it. He takes pornographic material and adds them to family movies that leave everyone wondering.
He also serves the rich and while doing this he puts in fluids into there dishes. Tyler's own business of paper street soap is the most important job. In this job they steal fat from liposuction clinics, and then turn the fat to soap. To sell it the same people who removed there fat.
These acts are subversive and go against what people consider to be rational. In Nietzsche's own words one who first recognizes most calamitous error which is morality. Durden is trying to oppose the morality the herd instinct in us all has created (Bergin, M.S. 2006).
Tyler Durden's goal presenting people with life experience as a way of promoting ubermench in everyone. In a confrontation against Raymond k. Hessel, a convenience store worker who had once dreamt of becoming a veterinarian. The narrator doing Tylers bidding and with Tylers words from my mouth transforms Raymond's life forever. At the verge of gunpoint he says he will be watching he and he must become a veterinary officer, or he will die since his life is such a waste. The narrator completes this near life experience by saying that Raymond k.
hessel's dinner will taste better than any meal one has ever tasted. And the next day will be the most beautiful day of your life. Thiis brings about the saying in life that every bad thing that occurs to a person makes the good things all seem to be seen as better (Bergin, M.S. 2006).
The last and most important theme shown by the author Chuck Palahniuk's in his Novel comes in the very end, As the narrator reflects on what he had done from "heaven" aprison cell. Then he began to notice that it was not just Tyler Durdens that were coming out of his mouth. But because he is Tyler Durden the same Tyler Durden that made him free and the same Tyler Durden whose aim was to blow up buildings.Tyer was now a free man and the narrator could no longer be for himself his only choice was to create someone new.
It's hard to be free, and then the narrator realizes that everyone Tyler did he had done. Then he just thought since Tyler is free he does not need Tyler anymore and soon gets rid of Tyler once and for all but only to end up in a prison cell with a hole on the face. The narrator was now receiving letters from Maria, who by now we know is his lover at large saying they are going to bring him back soon. Every now and then the narrator receives his lunch tray from a man with one black eye and that's when he knows his legacy lives on.
But at long last he was wrong and that is what the god in the walnut desk kept telling him. He says that he should have known that each person is special and unique in his own way. Both the narrator and Tyler leave us with one possibly good if not bad advice we just are and whatever happens just happens.Conclusion The book, Fight Club, is one of the most provocative books and was written by Chuck Palahniuk. The story is of a young man who discovers his rage in a world with failures and is not contended with an empty consumer culture. Tyler Durden thinks that he has found a way for himself and his friends to live beyond the confining lives.
But in world, there are no limits, brakes nor rules. Although unsophisticated, the book has a central message that the entire generation of men out here does not know how to be men mainly because they missed a father figure in their lives. They think being a man means to fight and destroy.
