...Fight Club In “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk we follow The Narrator in his problem-riddled everyday life, and his attempt to escape it by fabricating an alternate identity. The essay focuses on themes such as masculinity vs. emasculation, violence and the connection inbetween. Secondly, the essay includes references to the theoretical text “The Crisis of Manliness”. In the text “Fight Club” we follow the unnamed narrator or The Narrator in his daily life at Microsoft. Suffering from relationship problems, self-esteems problems and an insufferable boss, The Narrator has a hard time suffering from insomnia because of this. To handle his problems, he starts a fight club with his alter ego, also known as Tyler Durden. The text uses first person narration, as we see through The Narrators eyes, but also the thought of Tyler Durden, as they are the same person, even though he is written as an independent character in chapter 6. The Narrator and Tyler Durden start fight club as a way to regain their masculinity. This violence begins in the parking lot behind a bar, where Tyler tells the Narrator to hit him. The Narrator is reluctant at first, but gives in. In return he receives a punch to the chest by Tyler. This is the beginning of The Narrators self-realization. The Narrator agrees with Tyler that self-destruction is the way to self-improvement. The Narrator mentions the fight club as not being a solution to his problem, but rather a way to escape from the problems, as mentioned...
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...Alan Badel English 100/Major Essay #2 Professor Raymond Morris 23 October 2015 The Fight Club Aims to Free Individuals from Society’s Emasculating Shackles Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is an exciting fictional novel that will hold the audience captive following three revolving main characters in Marla Singer, Tyler Durden, and the narrator himself as they take the reader through confusing twists and perspectives, while providing a most revealing closure. Although the title suggests an exclusive organization focused on violence, the novel describes the emasculation of man in today’s modern age of consumerism, societal associations and family structure along with the main and sub-characters’ exercising of power and submission to power as evident throughout the novel. Chuck Palahniuk’s values illustrate in the novel how humanity is being enslaved by the power of consumerism, brought to general awareness a new mental disorder, and how he portrayed the narrator having experienced or enacted numerous anarchistic efforts in the hopes of being freed from the confines of an industrialized and necessity-driven society. It should also be noted that several rebellious acts were performed by the fight club members and subsequently members of Project Mayhem in order to gain notoriety and power in response to being economically and socially subdued. To understand the novel’s numerous projection of emasculation, masculinity will need to be established. Man’s foundation of masculinity...
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...Don DeLillo’s book, White Noise, tells the story of Jack Gladney and his family. Throughout the book, Jack takes on a professional, fictional persona resembling that of Hitler, being the Chairman of Hitler Studies at the College-on-the-Hill (DeLillo 4). Jack turns his professional persona into this fictional character, something he could transform himself into, as if he was filling a Hitler mold. Jack relies on this Hitler-esque persona to sustain his own personal identity and self-worth, although in his mind, this fake persona is only subsidiary to his own personality. Jack struggles with ascertaining the importance of himself as compared to the importance of his own made-up persona and this notion of fabricated reality becoming more important that actual reality is offered throughout White Noise. While in his role of Chairman of Hitler Studies, he refers to himself as J.A.K. Gladney and dresses in sweeping, dramatic robes while teaching. Jack also takes into consideration the advice of the chancellor, “He wanted me to “grow out” into Hitler. He himself was tall, paunchy, ruddy, jowly, big-footed and dull. A formidable combination. I had the advantages of substantial height, big hands, big feet, but badly needed bulk” (DeLillo 16). This impression of J.A.K. Gladney differed greatly from Jack’s own character, and the fact that he does not know German only adds to the plasticity of his fabricated self. The idea of false reality overtaking actual reality is shown by Jack and...
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...Comparisson of Masculinity and the Psychoanalytic theories using the example of the Fight Club. Introduction. Fight club is an interesting film to be reflected through psychoanalytic and masculinity theories. In this essay I will attempt to present the number of elements of narrative that can be explained by these theories. I intend to use citations from Marc A. Price's essay The Fight for Self: The Language of the Unconscious in Fight club regarding psychoanalytical concepts such as ego, super-ego and the id as well as Lynn M. Ta's dissertation Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism (regarding masulinity in the film), as these works were the main sources of my research. Then I'll try to come to the conclusion on which of two theories have more strength at being applied to films (primarily Fight Club). Application of theories and analysis. The connection that we shall draw between psychoanalytic theory and the film Fight Club is simple and is this; the narrator is a representation of the ego, for Tyler Durden we can substitute the id. In the Freudian psychic model the ego is the civilized part of consciousness. The ego is that part of the psychic apparatus that is modified so that a being can interact safely with other beings and thus remain accepted within the social group. It is important for identity formation that the individual is accepted by the group (that is wider society) therefore, a controlled id is...
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...Edward Bellamy’s Novel Looking Backward where he has a vision of the future through the life of Julian West. | David Kaliwata David Kaliwata David Kaliwata Isaac Bolder: History & Society Primary Response Paper: Looking Backward 11/4/2013 Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (2000-1887) When Edward Bellamy wrote his book Looking Backward (1887), he wasn’t trying to be part of the political scene but to merely write a fantasy novel. What came after the publication of his novel was the creation of more than 160 Nationalist-clubs, most notably Clubs that were advocating women suffrage. Edward Bellamy was seen by some as a male feminist who exfoliated the capitalist industrial movement of that time and wanted to paint a picture of a socialist utopia where everything was state owned and equally distributed. His book was not intended to be a blueprint for a political movement. I have to note that I did not read the book but various essays on the book and its impact on women suffrage. I feel that the book was written at a crucial time and although it wasn’t asking questions, it sparked a new way of thinking how society should be run. I believe we are all made equal and that everyone has a role in the development, upkeep and sustainability of society. Edward Bellamy’s had the same idea in mind in terms of equal distribution of labor and benefits. I will discuss what women suffrage is and the impact the book had. Women’s suffrage movement was a key issue in the 19th century...
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...Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is a narration on the separation and attempt to find oneself. The men in Fight Club battle each other and every time they hit their opponent, this helps the fighters find a sense of masculinity that has not been corrupted by the consumerism society they live in. The novel takes place in the nineties in a society that gets overpowered by large corporations. The narrator is not playing with a full deck, so to speak. He is only a depiction of one's ego and sometimes he lets Tyler(id) take over for him. Throughout the novel Tyler takes the narrator and himself on a quest to make the narrator's dreams come true. The twist comes in when the narrator becomes stronger from the help of Tyler(id) and he takes control again....
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...Emasculated Reality The novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is filled with a large number of motifs from downward movement and destruction to overall decay. The unnamed narrator uses motifs to show images and pictures of greater themes throughout the novel. The narrator and other main character Tyler Durden share the feeling that civilization has emasculated men and, “What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women” (Palahniuk 50). The author shows the reader many themes by describing overly vivid motifs that represent them. Motifs are images that show up throughout a work. Fight Club uses motifs of downward movement and disintegration to point to the larger themes of emasculation, self-destruction and rejection of civilization. Motifs of downward movement in the novel make visible many of the cultural norms, by which the narrator feels extremely emasculated. Not only do cultural norms make him feel emasculated, but also being surrounded by men who don't typically fit the definition of a man. The narrator himself doesn’t fit the definition of a typical man. He works a cubicle 9 to 5 job that is split with being sent all across the country like a carrier pigeon, evaluating insurance claims on failed safety equipment in cars that have already been subject to horrible life threatening accidents. Emasculation hits the narrator when he feels like it pointless to die in a body without few scars. The narrator says, “It’s nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock...
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...Fight Club Essay In today's society, the teachings of transcendentalist figures such as Emerson, Fuller, and Whitman are both thriving and dead. Many activities commonly practiced today are the opposite of what these men preached, such as social trends. However, one place we see a continuous use of transcendentalist ideals is in the movie business. Films are brimming with messages of non-conformity, the importance of individualism, and the idea that society corrupts people. One movie that translates these messages is Fight Club, written by Jim Uhls, released in 1999. This movie encapsulates all of the aforementioned themes and delivers them in a way that shows how these core concepts are still a part of our lives, although being written over...
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...Fight Club "There is enough on earth for everybody's need, but not for everyone's greed.” Mahatma Gandhi This quote fits perfectly on me. Even though I have enough clothes to last an entire lifetime, yet I keep finding myself at the mall, buying things I simple do not need at all. And I am not the only one, millions of people is doing the same thing. It is because we need certain things: we desire different certain things. Now what is that problem called? Consumerism. Modern society is based on different things. But one of those things, consumerism, has been growing majorly over the past couple of decades, mainly in America. Americans consume exponentially more than any other country in the world and are the leaders in waste production and It’s not only depression - that is harming the over consumers, it’s also creates lifestyles disease. In many people lives it’s controlling their lives. For a lot of people their main concern is how other people seen. “The things you, end up owning you” – that is a quote from fight club. Fight club is a book/film who shows consumerism at its worst form. The main character is first in the film, completely controlled of consumerism, which is described later in the essay. The book Fight Club is written by Chuck Palahniuk, it was later turned into a film. The Film/book is about a nameless narrator who works for a major car manufacture how can’t sleep. He has insomnia. He stumbles across different types of support groups. They make the...
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...Introduction Mass culture would have most readers and viewers believing that the Post-modern American male is a simple creature. Common stereotypes margin male satisfaction in a minimal setting – a Lazyboy armchair in a lounge with a flat screen TV playing ‘the game’ along with primal banter regarding women. More often than not, this is washed down with a beer. With this array of comfort and leisure we are inclined to believe that male lifestyle has reached its peak on the timeline of satisfaction. This was until David Fincher took Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club and made it into a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. With the male demographic being the hardest to pinpoint in the literature sense, David Fincher’s adaptation helpfully put Palahniuk’s thoughts into the cinematic forefront. This increased the popularity of Palahniuk’s other works and placed him in the cannon of Post-modern American fiction. It is the issues of modern masculinity that grasps critics’ attention more so than any other Palahniuk themes. It is very apparent that masculinity has changed as a natural progression of modernisation. This dissertation will analyse masculinity as it is depicted in Palahniuk’s writings and explore Palahniuk’s intentions and beliefs. I will interpret the responses of select critics in order to gain some understanding of what Palahniuk deems to be the ideal model of masculinity in the modern world, beneath his post-modern twists, transgressive characterization and...
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...Minimalist contentions: Fight Club Introduction Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most influential American fiction writers who emerged in the 1990s. His debut novel, Fight Club (hereafter: FC) reached cult status after the film adaptation by David Fincher was released in 1999, and widespread and divided critical reception was soon to follow. Much of the current debate about Fight Club focuses on the political implications of the text, but most often recourse to it by way of referencing the film. These arguments usually question or celebrate the transgressive potentials of the book (Giroux; Mendieta), or address issues of masculinity brought into the fore by their literary and cinematic representations emergent in the same decade (Tuss; Friday). However, few, if any, have addressed the literary aspirations of the text and its author. Although none of the approaches to the thematic concerns of Fight Club are unjustified, in the argument that follows I will suggest that conclusions drawn and critical judgments passed have been hasty, and not only failed to take into account the formal aspects of story-telling, but that the narrative features of Palahniuk’s text have largely went unexplored, and constitute a blind spot of the reception. Critics condemning or acclaiming the novel, and, indeed, many a cultic reader of Palahniuk ignored Fight Club as a literary narrative, and have inadvertently been repeating the catchphrases of the text, either reinforcing or trying to undermine what...
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...THE BREAKFAST CLUB Overview According to the movie, “The Breakfast Club”, it began on Saturday morning at the Shermer High School where five high school students from different social groups met for a detention of eight hours. They were asked to each write an essay by their principal Mr. Vernon on the topic “who do you think you are?” Mr. Vernon only saw them as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal (“The breakfast club,” n.d., para., 4). They saw themselves like what they had been stereotyped to be by the principal and also by the outer world. But at the end of the day it was not the case. During the morning period of the detention, they did not talk much to each other. But as the day went by, they ague and hated each other, believing that each of them were completely different and unique in the problems and tribulations they faced. As the movie unfolds, they open themselves to each other as they shared their deepest fear, emotions, and problems. They become friends irrespective of their cliques as they exploited their physical cognitive and sociology-emotional levels of development the (‘The breakfast club, 1985”). Narrative The movie begins on a Saturday morning at about seven o’clock. Their parents drop them off at school and they all meet up in the library. Then Mr. Vernon comes in and congratulates them for being early. As Mr. Vernon paused, Claire quickly puts up her hand, stands up, and tells Mr. Vernon that she knows it is detention but she...
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...UNIVERSITI TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN CENTRE FOR FOUNDATION STUDIES FHEL1012 ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC STUDY FOUNDATION IN SCIENCE ISSUE ANALYSIS Name | | Student ID | | Theme | | Title | | Lecture Group | | Tutorial Group | | Lecturer’s Name | | TITLE TITLE Should Smoking Be Banned in Public Restaurants? Justify your essay the essay Justify your essay the essay In the perfect situation, smoking policy would be set by bar or restaurant owners, and customers would patronize the establishments with the policy they prefer. Customers would decide—without the government’s help—if they want to avoid smoke-filled rooms or enter them. They might even choose to sit in an area sectioned off for smokers or non-smokers, but the ultimate issue is choice ( Ruwart 1). When the government starts telling restaurant owners what their customers can and cannot do, the government is overstepping its boundaries. page number the essay page number the essay Our government aims to protect us—to save us from society’s evils. However, in an attempt to protect the public from the effects of passive smoking (second hand smoke)—of which, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in 1994, “the statistical evidence does not . . . support a conclusion that there are substantive health effects . . .” (Krauthammer)—the feds have failed to protect a vital part of the U.S. economic population: business owners. Many people who drink also tend to smoke; banning drinkers...
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...Edited by Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle This unique volume collects a series of essays that link new developments in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and recent trends in contemporary cinema. Though Lacanian theory has long had a privileged place in the analysis of film, film theory has tended to ignore some of Lacan’s most important ideas. As a result, Lacanian film theory has never properly integrated the disruptive and troubling aspects of the filmic experience that result from the encounter with the Real that this experience makes possible. Many contemporary theorists emphasize the importance of the encounter with the Real in Lacan’s thought, but rarely in discussions of film. By bringing the encounter with the Real into the dialogue of film theory, the contributors to this volume present a new version of Lacan to the world of film studies. These essays bring this rediscovered Lacan to bear on contemporary cinema through analysis of a wide variety of films, including Memento, Eyes Wide Shut, Breaking the Waves, and Fight Club. The films discussed here demand a turn to Lacanian theory because they emphasize the disruptive role of the Real and of jouissance in the experience of the human subject. There is a growing number of films in contemporary cinema that speak to film’s power to challenge and disturb the complacency of spectators, and the essays in Lacan and Contemporary Film analyze some of these films and bring their power to light. Because of its dual focus on developments...
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...passage, beginning with complex sentence structure. It then switches to long, run-on sentences, eventually settling on shorter, simpler sentence structure to suggest a sense of shock and stupefication to the reader. The frank, graphic diction also enhances the pathos of the essay, horrifying and shocking the reader. Figurative language such as imagery also enhances the feeling of loss and regret by comparing the actions in the boxing ring to the life-and-death struggle of a rodent-or even worse, to a vegetable, defenseless even as its head is smashed in. The syntax of the passage contributes greatly to the readers shock because of the way it manipulates time. The syntax first begins to shift at the outset of the fight, alternating between long and short sentence structure to enhance the feeling of speed and intensity. However, when Paret “got trapped in a corner”, the sentence structure becomes longer, including many fragments in one sentence to accentuate the slowness of the event-almost as if time is stopped entirely. Paret’s death is then recounted using short, fragmented sentence structure in order to provide stark contrast to the previous paragraph-to symbolize the transition from the fight for survival toward death. The sentence structure also conveys the shock of the situation with short, simple sentences. Diction is used to draw emotion from the reader. The passage uses words such as “maulings” to not only demonstrate the dangers of boxing, but also to trigger...
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