fight club

Fight Club is not about winning or losing. Paul Palahniuk’s Fight Club is about the issues of masculinity in our modern capitalist society. It is a novel about men who resist conforming to what society defines as masculine. In our present day culture, men are presented with the ideal form of masculinity that they are expected to achieve such as being successful in the work place, going to the gym, and grooming yourself to look attractive. The unnamed narrator of the story undergoes an identity crisis, which is a result of capitalism; he struggles to find himself by going through various support groups before finally attending Fight Club. The consumer driven society has replaced the traditional values of masculinity, which creates conflicts and becomes the catalyst for Fight club: a place to re-masculinize through physical combat.

At first, the narrator conforms to the uneventful and dull capitalist society. He fines success in his work at an automobile manufacture, has obtained a large portion of his Ikea catalog, and has an expansive wardrobe. He is defined by his possessions and has no identity outside his furniture, which he remarks, “I wasn’t the only slave of my nesting instincts” (Palahniuk, 43) and “I am stupid, and all I do is want and need things.” (Palahniuk, 146) For the narrator, there is no fine line between the consumer [narrator] and the product. His life at the moment is a cycle of earning a wage, purchasing products, and representing himself through his purchases. “When objects and persons exist as equivalent to the same system, one loses the idea of other, and with it, any conception of self or privacy.” (Article, 2) The narrator loses sight of his own identity; he has all these material goods, but lacks the qu...

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...heir identity. Capitalism is seen as a threat to masculinity; the narrator was once manipulated and seduced by advertisers and employers into consumerism. He lost his own sense of self and his male identity to commodities. Fight Club is a novel warning the dangers of the modern capitalist society that compromises masculinity for consumption and enforces new expectations for men. If men don’t reach that level of masculinity, then their actions are judged based on a scale of how masculine and feminine. It puts a lot of pressure to become the ideal man in modern society; Fight club was created to solve the problems of conforming to society. Throughout the novel, it is prevalent that the narrator and the members of Fight club sought a solution to their masculinity through brawling and fighting. “You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club.” (Palahniuk, 51)