Fight Club Analysis

William Carlos Williams ends In the American Grain’s final chapter on Abraham Lincoln with the end of a violent, contradictory nature and the establishment of an identity “it was the end of THAT period” (Williams 234) . America has matured past adolescence but contemporary society finds itself in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Young adult males live without purpose or meaning and struggle against a conditioned, preexisting identity defined by history. As Tyler Durden restrains the narrator in Fight Club and reflects on the history of violence in the foundations of contemporary America, he argues the necessity of violence to create identity, “everything up to now is a story, and everything after now is a story” (Palahniuk p.75). The homosocial kiss and unwilling participation of the searing chemical burn is the moment of perfection the narrator lives for. The greatest moment in the narrator’s life is his understanding of deconstruction and violence to create identity. Human sacrifice is crucial in creating a cultural identity and middle-aged men living in a contemporary first world country have been denied the need for self-creation.

Earlier in the text, “Walter from Microsoft” catches the narrator’s eye. Walter is the aspiration of all contemporary young men, “perfect teeth and clear skin” and the pride of his alma mater (Palahniuk 55). Success and perfection are lacking for Walter and though social constructs may example him to other potential young professionals, Walter longs for and stares at the narrator. Walter is too young to have fought in any wars or participated in any self-destructive pursuit of identity. He stares, puzzled as he examines the narrator and his crooked smile. His smile and violent bruises...

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Delfino, Andrew Steven, "Becoming the New Man in Post-PostModernist Fiction: Portrayals of Masculinities in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club" (2007). English Theses. Paper 20. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_theses/20

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Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005.

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