Similarities between a Narrator and a Scholar In literature throughout history, we often find similarities between two texts. Though the works seem very different, there are many minor details in writing that can link two very different pieces together. In the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk we see a young Narrators life, described through his own eyes, as we discover the truth of his false reality. In the book Wit by Margaret Edson we follow the life and death of a scholar faced with the battle of cancer. Though the two works sound very different, there are many similar elements that connect the two writings. We can see the similarities in ways, such as the layout of the book, and the main characters development in both. …show more content…
In both Fight Club and Wit one way the set-up of the stories is the same, is the fact that both authors open up with a scene that takes place later on in the book, and the character tells the story of how they have gotten to the point they are at in this said scene. We see this layout in Wit, when the play opens up with the main character, Vivian Bearing, walking onto an empty stage attached to an IV pole. She starts off by telling us how she feels and what life is like in her current position, she then starts off the play by telling the audience how she has gotten to this point by telling the story of when she found out she had ovarian cancer (Edson). We then see this same layout in Fight Club. In Fight Club , the story opens up with our narrator with a gun in his mouth describing what he is feeling and thinking at this moment, such as how the gun feels in his mouth and things he remembers doing. This leads the Narrator to start describing to the audience how he has gotten to his current position. Then beginning to tell us the story of his life starting right before he meets Tyler, the man about to shoot him in the beginning, and tells us the story through his memory (Palahniuk). As we can see in both works the layout of the story line has similarities. Both writings open up with a scene, that the character then starts to describe and …show more content…
Both Edson and Palahniuk use a physical or mental illness in the start and further development of their character. We see the character development of Vivian Bearing start based on the fact that she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This being the illness that helps begins her characterization. The story starts off with her first character trait being that she has cancer and we then see how she develops as a character because of this illness. Showing that Edson uses the illness to develop Vivian’s character. The main focus of the story becomes how Vivian develops as a person because of /due to the cancer (Edson). We see this idea back up in an article by Jacqueline Vanhoutte when she states “we still think about cancer as a disease of the self. W;t proves no exception to this rule: it proposes that cancer offers an occasion for self-extension” which backs up the idea that Vivian’s character is built and extended from the fact that she has cancer (Vanhoutte). Vivian is a character created from an illness similar to the Narrator in Fight Club. Where in Fight Club we see, the Narrator starts off by explaining that he has insomnia, and our first character traits we see from the Narrator are based off the fact that he has insomnia. Insomnia being the illness used to characterize the Narrator. Later on in