Breaking the First Two Rules Agents of Repression and Subversion in Fight Club

Breaking the First Two Rules Agents of Repression and Subversion in Fight Club

"The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club" (48). The first two rules governing the underground fighting rings of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club serve as more than an attempt to maintain the secrecy of the illegal clubs. The explicit definitions of what the novel's characters can and cannot think and talk about set the stage for the story's examination of the repressive forces of society and the psychological consequences of the ever-present cultural 'no.' The nameless narrator who creates the fight clubs exists in such a state of cultural insulation and repression that the only sublimation of his unconscious desires he finds possible is the projection of the mental struggle between his conscious and unconscious minds into the physical world. This projection starts with physical combat between the two members of the split subject, but eventually gives way to the complete seizure of control by the unconscious half - Tyler Durden - whenever the narrator's conscious half-falls asleep. This drastic realization of Freud's theory on satisfying unconscious desires in the dream state does indeed break the narrator out of the suffocating comfort of his normative social roles. However, as the narrator's unconscious mind gains increasing control over his daily activities, its destructive tendencies begin to destroy not only everything that the narrator hates about his life, but also everything that he discovers makes life worth living.

In the beginning of the novel, the narrator finds little meaning in his life. Completely disillusioned with his job, his love life, and most of all himself, the narrator summarizes his role in consumerist America in the bleakest terms: "Pull a lever. Push a button. You don't understand any of it, and then you just die" (12). In the narrator's perception, materialist priorities have "people chasing cars and clothes they don't need…jobs they hate" (149), and have led him to a point at which he realizes he is "a thirty-year old boy" (51) living in a condo he describes as "a filing cabinet for widows and young professionals" (41). Following all the steps prescribed by society-going to college, getting a job, becoming self-supportive-has led to a dead end for the narrator, prompting him to reflect, "I hated my life. I was tired and bored…[and] couldn't see any way to change things" (172).