The Masculinity Crisis - Fight Club Analysis

The Masculinity Crisis: Fight Club Analysis

By Carlee Strinich

Controversy drives art. True art stimulates emotion, whether it provokes anger or

excitement. Banksy, an English graffiti and street artist, illustrates this truth with his satirical street art intertwined with dark humor aimed against society. One of his most popular and controversial works, Consumer Jesus, depicts Jesus crucified on a cross with outstretched hands holding shopping bags. While this piece angers many, Banksy’s work exists to generate thought regarding what is widely accepted in society without question. Similar to Banksy, Chuck Palahniuk uses literature to stimulate thought and emphasize the ideals of nonconformity with controversial themes interwoven into his art. Through the use of disoriented narrative displaying the narrator's fractured identity, and scenes of violence, Chuck Palahniuk in Fight Club proposes the idea that our capitalistic society has caused the destruction of masculinity.

The author utilizes the disoriented narrative as a product of the protagonist’s deranged mind, mental and psychological state, causing the fragmented irregular mind of the insomniac narrator to show the current state of man’s emasculation throughout the story. Following a nonlinear structure, the book begins at the end of the story, before flashing back to the past to unfold what caused the series of events. The narrator, who knows himself to be a man named Jack, starts the story knowing that Tyler is his alter-ego, his split personality, but still does not acknowledge it (Bernaerts). The narrator states in the opening scene, “People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden” (Palahniuk 11). After the reader learns that the narrator is telling events from the past, it becomes evident that Jack’s narration is unreliable because of his madness (Bernaerts). Later in the end of the story, despite the realization that he is Tyler, Jack's delirium and delusion still affects him, asking Tyler “So, now I know about Tyler, will he just disappear?” The hallucination of Tyler still exists as the narrator tells that Tyler replies, “No,”

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Tyler says, still holding my hand, “I wouldn’t be here in the first place if you didn’t want me” (Palahniuk 168). In the end, Jack self examines his delirium and why Tyler existed. In efforts to subdue the severity of his madness, he tells himself, “The first time I met Tyler, I was asleep. I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash” (Palahniuk 173). The narrator is able to acknowledge his hatred for himself, “I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life” (Palahniuk 168). And even admits that he was a victim to society, “I was tired and bored