Fight Club Identity Essay

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Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is a commentary on the alienation and struggle for the search for self identity. The men in this story constantly fight each other throughout the novel in order that they can hopefully show off their masculinity to a world that seems so dependent on materialistic items to prove the kind of person you are. What we define as a “real” man today is very different to fifty, one-hundred years ago. Today, we see a true man as a person who has a steady job, he can support a family and is the “man of the house”. But years before, men were held at a much different standard. To be a man, it was determined by how many battles they have one or hardships he had to overcome. One of the most prominent questions asked by Palahniuk is why have men allowed for society to basically rob them of this identity that the people in the novel and in the real world want. We can see this evolve throughout the course of the story with the relationship between Tyler Durden and the Narrator of the story. The narrator explains to the readers the boring, repetitive
“Who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world. Even if you told the kid in the copy center that he had a good fight, you wouldn't be talking to the same man.”. (46) This quote helps truly explain the true nature of this unique fight club. Fight club is basically the mental divide between the “real” world and the completely different world that is fight club. Men in fight club are stripped of their everyday persona and are basically stripped to their core to engage in fights. Who they really are as a person inside are brought forward in these fight and allowing for people to truly understand their true self. Because, once they leave the club and return back to reality, these core values are put away behind the “robotic” lifestyle that they live by, which can connect with people in the real

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