The Fight Club: Main Themes In The Fight Club

1004 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Fight club themes and analysis

One of the main themes in the book “Fight Club” are mental illness, mixed with loneliness and freedom from the expectations of society.

Tyler, one of the main characters, is created due to protagonists’ lack of connection with people around him. The protagonist had a sense of loneliness and attended several support groups to alleviate the feeling. He was not rejected at the support groups as the members thought he was sick just like they were, yet the feeling of his loneliness was not alleviated.

Materialism is another recurrent theme. The narrator mentions how he has worked his entire life for the cheap, bare-bone items in his apartment. He tried to fill the void in his life by buying worthless, meaningless stuff. Eventually, he finds
The narrator finally discovers that Tyler was a figment of his imagination. He at that points must stop him. To get rid of Tyler, end Project Mayhem, and all of the Fight Clubs; however, was not an easy task. Tyler did not want to leave and this conflict was only resolved with the narrator after shooting himself and thus killing
It seems that this mental voice is productive, it does change him in the way that he wants to change; however, it is also destructive since this becomes a negative and explosive relationship, eventually leading to an attempted suicide.

Overall, the story of fight club resolves around mental illness, the battle of our narrator, out patient, with the voice inside him. Through this story, large themes are explored including materialism and freedom in society. A major theme of Fight Club is an answer to the rejection of a consumer society is with the use of violence. Fighting was a way to free a man from society. Material items are seen as malevolent because they enslave us and control us.

We desire many luxuries and take them for granted. Our society is based largely on the materialistic wants of consumers from advertising and marketing. This demand distracts us from who we really are and should be destroyed. The filmmakers have adapted many of these meanings into the film that was

Show More
Related

  • Materialism in The Dharma Bums and Goodbye, Columbus

    1377 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kerouac also reflects on the futile trap of materialism. Japhy discusses "all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least fancy new cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.

    Read More

  • Response Essay One on Fight Club (film)

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    In historical context the rise of the free market industries is at its peak. In the year 1999 oil industries, electronics, fast food, clothing lines hit the front line. For the first time ever poor people are able to have what rich people have. Keeping up with the Jones, as many people say. There is this mindset of get it now and pay for it later. This leave most of the working class in debt. While consumers get the latest luxuries they are being “Consumed by Consumerism” (Domigpe). We have all become slaves to the brands of everything we buy. For example, when new electronics come out on the market that is mostly a want, but looks awesome, we buy it to keep up with the Jones and also because the advertisements tell us to. We also need the companies to live, because without them there is no employment. “Because of this circle, which is hanging over everybody in a modern society, the capitalists have pushed us into a place, where consumerism and capitalism go hand in hand” (Denzin). With the deb...

    Read More

  • Film Analysis: A Rebel Without a Cause

    1290 Words  | 3 Pages

    This movie focused on teenagers and family life because the ideal image of the 1950s family was a perfect family consisting of a mom and dad with two children. Everything with the family appears to be great and full of happiness. The father went to work and provided for the family, while the mother stayed at home and tended to her children and maintaining the home. This thriving period can be described as the golden age of family because the 1950s stereotype of the perfect family life instigated this suspected boom of happiness of the American family. However, A Rebel Without A Cause expresses that the times were not as perfect as they were depicted. Dysfunctional families that led their young adults to rebellion shape the movie.

    Read More

  • Fight Club Movie Vs Book Analysis

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    As I read the novel, I couldn’t help but to compare each word to the movie. I may have just recently watched it, but I was suddenly unsure of what I had seen. Was my memory failing me or were things truly that different? I felt like these differences changed the entire story line. The narrator shouldn’t be in a building that was about to be destroyed, this defeated the purpose of Project Mayhem. Then again, I was only on page one.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between 1984 And Fight Club

    1224 Words  | 3 Pages

    “In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four” (Orwell 250). Winston lives in a time where a set of rules preventing him to be free are imposed on him – the Party defines what freedom is and is not. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows (Orwell 103)”.   Winston expresses his views on The Party within his diary even though he knows it is not accepted by The Party or the Thought Police.  The narrator in Fight Club uses fighting as a form of escapism from his anti-consumerist ideologies revealed by his alter-ego, Tyler Durden. “Fuck off with your sofa units and strine green stripe patterns. I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve—let the chips fall where they may. (Fight Club)” Tyler urges the narrator to stop conforming to consumerist-imposed views of perfection and break barriers to evolve. Tyler and the narrator create a medium for people in similar positions to escape from societal bound norms; it is aptly named “Fight Club”. In comparison, both Tyler Durden and the narrator from Fight Club and Winston Smith from 1984 share

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of 'America' By Tony Hoagland

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    Principal themes in the poem consist of consumerism, capitalism, and most importantly greed. The poem described the journey of the poet as he went--goes through an implied spiritual transformation starting with getting annoyed with one of his students wanting to yell at him “how full of shit” he is, after that he recalled his dream, after dowsing off, he recalled something else a poem by Karl Marx a major communist. “I was listening to cries of the past when I should have been listening to the cries of the future,” after the fact, he came to an understanding with the student while imagining the mediforeical nightmare. Grouping themes together there are dreams, nightmares, waking life, dream life, sleeping, and clarity exactly, and being aware that the person is dreaming. When Hoagland references people drowning in the river, it could be compared to people working across seas in different countries, manufacturing goods for the average American while the workers live in harsh environments, but no one thinks of that when running around in new Nike shoes. The “you” in the pleasure boat is American people or America frankly, or even the ideals of consumerism were the normal person needs a new IPhone ever year when it is released. In the poets dream when he talks about stabbing his father and “Ben Fra...

    Read More

  • Fight Club

    2011 Words  | 5 Pages

    In conclusion to this analysis of these characters they go together where the resolve is Jack coming to the conclusion that he had truly taken his life threw a complete twist and in all seriousness didn’t want to experience being Tyler. What was seen there this analysis that Tyler was a real person and Jack was very jealous and everyone around wanted to be like him. Jack eventually grew as a man and wanted to use everything he experience to help mold him as an individual. They way in which he commanded at the end of the movie by shooting himself giving complete orders to the guys in project mayhem that this is something that Jack would have done. To us as an audience you can tell that they he has grown through the movie and took complete ownership.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis of Fight Club

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fight Club is a story about the never-ending struggles between classes. The Project Mayhem is formed in an attempt to overthrow the upper class who undermines the lower class. There are a number of scenes in the story, which highlights the struggle between classes. For instance, when Tyler pees in the soup of an upper class person, when he splices pornography into films and the scene when a mechanic takes the unnamed narrator to steal body fat. The characters here do all they can to fight against the upper class people and to get revenge.

    Read More

  • Fight Club

    519 Words  | 2 Pages

    Society becomes so rationalized that one must push himself to the extreme in order to feel anything or accomplish anything. The more you fight in the fight club, the tougher and stronger you become. Getting into a fight tests who you are. No one helps you, so you are forced to see your weaknesses. The film celebrates self-destruction and the idea that being on the edge allows you to be beaten because nothing really matters in your life.

    Read More

  • Masculinity in "Fight Club"

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...from all material items and does not use society’s standards as the rules to his identity. According to Fight Club, Tyler has found his masculine identity and the members of Fight Club are able to do this as well by enduring the pain of Fight Club and not conforming to society’s standards. When one is not tied down to material items and possessions to define them, they see their true identity. This masculinity defined by Fight Club is the theory that freedom comes from having nothing; thereby men are liberated by society’s confines, most specifically the male American Dream.

    Read More

  • Marxism In Fight Club

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fight Club “Its only after we’ve lost everything are we free to do anything”, Tyler Durden as (Brad Pitt) states, among many other lines of contemplation. In Fight Club, a nameless narrator, a typical “everyman,” played as (Edward Norton) is trapped in the world of large corporations, condominium living, and all the money he needs to spend on all the useless stuff he doesn’t need. As Tyler Durden says “The things you own end up owning you.” Fight Club is an edgy film that takes on such topics as consumerism, the feminization of society, manipulation, cultism, Marxist ideology, social norms, dominant culture, and the psychiatric approach of the human id, ego, and super ego. “It is a film that surrealistically describes the status of the American

    Read More

  • Setting Analysis – “Fight Club”

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    The narrator is changed by his experience with fight club; his life becomes all about fight club. Fight club becomes the reason for the narrators existence. The narrator experiences a shift in consciousness; in that, he is able to understand more of who he is and what really matters in life through fight clubs trial by fire. Through battle and a mindset of counterculture and a complete expulsion of ...

    Read More

  • Criticisms of Consumerism and Materialism in Fight Club (1999)

    886 Words  | 2 Pages

    The opening scenes of the movie focus on the narrator, the epitome of a consumerist. He asserts, “Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct…I would flip through catalogues and wonder ‘what kind of dining set defines me as a person?’” His IKEA fetish is the outcome of his unfound identity. He purchases these goods not because he needs them, but because it is represented as the optimum apartment for a single man in catalogues.

    Read More

  • Fight Club Case Study

    1492 Words  | 3 Pages

    Our group collectively decided to choose the movie Fight Club as the movie to review for this case study. Fight Club was released on October 15, 1999 and is based off the novel written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996. The movie was directed by David Fincher and featured several outstanding actors such as Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. We settled on reviewing Fight Club due to the films’ psychologically thrilling nature.

    Read More

  • What Are Sigmund Freud's Contributions To Society

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    Consumerism has grown quickly and effectively. It has become so integrated into our modern world that it is no longer singled out. Individuals revolve their life around material objects and repeatedly fall for commercials urging them to purchase unnecessary objects. This system was spearheaded by Bernays. All of our consumer needs are tailored to ensure they are overly fulfilled. A simple task such as going grocery shopping, has been micromanaged by companies; they can pay for product placement. Holiday shopping, sales, blowout events, etc. are all ways to trick the individual into the consumer spiral. Commercials and advertisements find ways to appeal to our so called repressions and bring out our craving to obtain that object. The film explained that most things are attributed to sexual desire, so an example is a perfume commercial with an oversexualized ideal of a woman or man. (The Century of the Self) The economy is only one of the ways we are limited. Freud’s ideas have worked both on an individual level and on a larger

    Read More

More about The Fight Club: Main Themes In The Fight Club

Open Document