Fight_Club;_the_Emasculated_Man

Fight Club; the Self-Destruction Guide for the Emasculated Man During an era where bookshelves are stacked with feel-good stories, self-help guides, and The YaYa Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Chuck Palahniuk penned a story full of nitty-gritty nihilism, and anti-materialism. This story is titled Fight Club. Fight Club is a short novel that chronicles an unnamed man who copes with an emasculated, self-obsessed, consumerist society, by creating an alter-ego named Tyler Durden. Throughout Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk presents the major theme of the emasculation of man by deploying the supporting themes of father abandonment issues, anti-materialism, and nihilism, depicted through the characters of Mr. X (the unnamed main character), and his alter ego Tyler Durden. Throughout the entire novel there is a desperate cry for a father figure, cry for some sort of masculine figure to model themselves after. Fight Club presents the abandonment of the father figure within society, leaving, “…A generation of men raised by women.”Both Mr. X and Tyler Durden’s fathers were absent through most of their lives. At one point Mr. X says, “Me, I knew my dad for about 6 years, but I don’t remember anything. My dad started a new family in a new town about every 6 years. This isn’t so much like a family as it’s like he sets up franchises.” Mr. X goes on to say, “My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what' My dad didn't know, so he said get a job. When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what' My dad didn't know, so he said, get married. I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need." These passages show how even though his father has abandoned him, Mr. X still strives to find some sort of a masculine role-model in his father, but is left feeling like an emasculated “thirty-year-old boy”. In Fight Club Mr. X and Tyler Durden play the specific roles of the emasculated consumer and the anti-consumer. In the novel Fight Club, Tyler Durden acts as the physical embodiment of the anti-consumer beliefs. Tyler lives in an abandoned house, steals his clothes from Laundromats, and owns very little and cares to own very little. Tyler says, "Generations have been working jobs they hate, just so they can buy shit they don't need.”Tyler addresses man putting their satisfaction for material desires over pursuing satisfying life-styles, because of the commercial belief that the more you conform to the image of man the more you are a man. Mr. X plays the very specific role of the white-collar clone drowning in his materialistic desires. Mr. X is stricken with an insuppressible instinct to “nest”. Mr. X says, "I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA catalogues." This insuppressible desire within Mr. X to “nest “is the effeminate result of his emasculated manhood. After his apartment is blown “sky-high” Mr. X is left with only his most basic needs and without his safety blanket of materialism. In a moment of epiphany Mr. X rejects his materialistic past and embraces a new anti-consumer belief. He says, "You buy furniture, you tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled, then the right set of dishes, then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things that you used to own, now they own you." As a result of Mr. X’s new anti-consumer beliefs he begins to reject all forms of consumer commercialism. He challenges the emasculated man trying to fit into what commercialism makes men out to be, “The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says.” Mr. X essentially throws the hard message that being a man is much more than washboard abs and impeccable looks, that those things in fact are a figment of commercialism, and have nothing to do with being a man. In Fight Club, the main characters response to their personal emasculation and their emasculated society is to throw Nihilism around like a philosophical hot potato in order to destroy and recreate their own society. The main characters Mr. X and Tyler Durden are repressed and emasculated by their society. They both take a Nihilistic approach in order to not only destroy themselves and society but to recreate themselves and society as well. Tyler Durden is the Billy Graham of the Nihilistic message. Throughout the novel it seems as if every other word out of Tyler’s mouth is “nothing” and “destruction”. Mr. X holds the same self-destruction sentiment as well, “Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer. “(pg.49). Mr. X recounts a particularly Nihilistic conversation between himself and Tyler, “Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don’t fall all the way I can’t be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn’t just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn’t a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can’t just play it safe anymore… Only after disaster can we be resurrected. “(pg.70). This nihilistic sentiment of displays that without death there is no life, without sacrifice there is no result, and to truly self-improve you have to self-destruct. In order to regain their masculinity Mr. X, and Tyler Durden believe that one has to destroy society and its present concept of man, and to take control recreate the true image of man and masculinity. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is only 208 pages long, and jam packed with literary hay-makers. The message attacks the commercialist consumer lifestyle of society and highlights the modern mans struggle to find some figment of masculinity within this society. Mr. X and Tyler Durden portray the ticked off, pissed off attitude of the emasculated modern man who are finding self-destructive answers to a society obsessed with self-improvement. \