Fight club book: summary, analysis and characters

The fight Club (Fight club, 1996), also known as Fight club, is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. The work proposes the reader to reflect on the consumer society and the fragility of the individual within it.

What defines us as people? What does it mean to be happy? How happy do the objects we own make us? Is violence an escape route from personal problems?

These are some of the issues that the novel reveals. It is like the "inner voice" that we all have, a desperate cry for "help" before an increasingly materialistic society, which destroys and isolates the individual from true happiness.

Book summary

The novel tells the story of a character, who acts as a narrator and does not reveal his name at any time, tired of his personal life and his work environment.

Insomnia and group therapy

The protagonist is a common man dominated by consumerism and the materialism that prevails in society, which causes insomnia.

One day, his doctor recommended that he attend group therapy for men with testicular cancer, in order for him to know the true suffering and to get to sleep.

In these groups he meets Marla Singer, a woman who also attends the talks without having any illness. During one of the therapeutic sessions both have a confrontation that leads them to try not to coincide in the same meetings.

Soon the protagonist also meets Tyler Durden, a moonlighting man, with whom he begins to share a flat after his house was engulfed in flames after an explosion. In the apartment he meets again with Marla Singer, since she has an affair with Tyler Durden.

Creation of the fight club and its rules

After an argument with Marla Singer, Tyler Durden asks the protagonist to "hit him hard." Thus arises a new and peculiar clandestine therapy group called "the fight club." Where young employees, dissatisfied with their lives, come every night to fight. This group has a series of rules that all members must comply with:

1. Nobody talks about fight club.
2. Neither member talks about fight club.
3. If any of the participants yells "enough", the fight ends immediately.
4. There should only be two men per fight.
5. Only one fight at a time.
6. He fights without a shirt or shoes.
7. The fights last as long as it takes.
8. If it's a member's first night at the club, he has to fight.

This group also serves Tyler Durden to fight against consumerism and spread his ideals among the members. Little by little, the group spreads to different parts of the American geography.

Later Tyler Durden creates a parallel group, with members of the club of the fight, that tries to end modern civilization, denominated "Project Mayhem".

The narrator participates in this group, however, not satisfied with the behavior of Tyler Durden tries to stop him.

Double personality

At this point in the plot, it is discovered that the narrator and Tyler Durden are actually the same person. What the protagonist suffers from is a dissociative identity disorder. That is, a double personality of the main character that arises as a consequence of the protagonist's unhappy and dissatisfied life with his work, a fact that causes insomnia.

Later, the protagonist tries to stop Tyler Durden at the idea of ​​him blowing up different buildings with explosives. On the roof of one of the buildings, the narrator confronts his alter ego and manages to finish him off.

Then the narrator hopes that the explosives made by Tyler Durden will blow up the building and, consequently, him too. However, that never happens as the bombs never explode. Thus, the protagonist decides to take the weapon that Tyler Durden carried with him and tries to commit suicide.

Finally, the narrator awakens in a psychiatric hospital, from there the members of "Project Mayhem" continue with their plans to change the world and wish for the return of Tyler Durden.

Analysis of the book

A first-person narrator, a direct language in which simple and related phrases stand out. And, as a backdrop, a story that hides a deep criticism of the consumer society and the vulnerability of the individual being within a civilization that prioritizes materialism as a philosophy of lifetime.

These are the ingredients that Chuck Palahniuk used to write a novel that he tries to present to us the world we live in, how are our relationships with others and, most importantly, where go.

Consumerism vs happiness

What do we reduce happiness to?

Companies try to get consumers to change their product every season: clothes, mobile phones, cars ...

All it takes is a good slogan and at the celebrity of the moment showing his smile to imply that by acquiring a certain product we will have guaranteed happiness.

The protagonist, who does not need to be presented with a specific name, could be anyone nonconformist, a slave in his own routine and to whom his problems do not allow her to reconcile dream.

The narrator comes to represent one of the main dilemmas of capitalist society and it is that, as many people, he believes that the acquisition of material goods is directly related to achieving the happiness.

You buy a piece of furniture and you say to yourself: "This is the last sofa I will ever need in my life." You buy the sofa and for a couple of years you feel satisfied that although not everything is going well, at least you have managed to solve the sofa issue. Then the right dishes. Then the perfect bed. Curtains. The carpet.

Finally, you get trapped in your nest and the objects that you used to possess now possess you.

One of the ideas that the author tries to offer his readers could be explained through the concept of “hedonic adaptation”. Generally, we tend to think that after acquiring a desired object we will be fully happy forever.

However, as happens to the protagonist of the novel, this state of joy that the acquisition of this product offers us is ephemeral. It disappears the moment we get used to it and automatically consider that another "goal" will make us happier than the previous one.

If you don't know what you want (…) you end up having a lot of things that you don't need.

The "hedonic adaptation" explains the ability of people to get used to a situation, whether positive or negative, and return to the previous emotional state.

In the late 1990s, psychologist Michael Eysenck explained the concept with his "hedonic treadmill" theory. In it he compares the behavior of people with that of a hamster walking in a wheel. Well, like the rodent, individuals tend to go to the same place without achieving the goal of lasting happiness. This leads us to a state of constant dissatisfaction.

Could it be that one day we will understand that the important thing is not to achieve a goal but to enjoy the journey?

Tyler Durden as antagonist of the consumer system

Like the narrator of this story, sometimes routine problems invade us and we believe they have no solution.

Then, the character of Tyler Durden emerges as the main antagonist of consumer culture and as the protagonist's alter ego. It supposes a projection of the character that emanates from despair and stress.

It could even be interpreted as a product of the main character's subconscious. It is the part that he would like to break with everything to start from scratch.

A desperate cry amid the deafening noise

Before "meeting" Tyler Durden, the protagonist decides to turn to support groups in order to combat insomnia. On attending these sessions he states:

That's why I appreciated support groups so much, because people, when they think you're dying, give you their full attention.

We are many but we are completely alone. We live in a society where we hear a lot but hear very little. We are stunned in an increasingly globalized world in which we place less and less importance on relationships.

We dialogue, we order the interlocutor what he has to do and how, and even we constantly let him know his mistakes. In a conversation, we often just wait our turn to speak while we think about what we are going to respond to. But where was the empathic listening?

Like the protagonist, many people feel misunderstood and this causes them to prefer to live isolated from society.

Fight club or violence as a way out

At the moment in which Tyler Durden appears in the life of the protagonist, the secret group "the fight club" emerges.

A group of men, who are invaded by their personal problems, who get together to fight. Thus, in this novel, violence is justified as the only emotional outlet in a world in which power and wealth are the foundations of success.

They use force to achieve an end. Most of them are in fight club "because of something they are afraid to fight against." Some of these men by day are lawyers or executives who, thanks to these nightly fights, manage to lessen their fear and move on.

Project Mayhem: self-destruction as salvation

At one point, Tyler Durden doesn't settle for fight club to vindicate the fight against consumerism. That is why he created "Project Mayhem", whose goal is "the complete and immediate destruction of civilization."

But, he not only proposes an attack against consumer society but also speaks of self-destruction.

Tyler tells me that I am still far from bottoming out and that if I don't go all the way down I won't be able to save myself. Jesus did the same with the story of his crucifixion. He shouldn't just give up money, property, and knowledge. It is not just a haven for the weekend. I should stop trying to improve and carve out a mess for myself. I can no longer play it safe.

It's the narrator's alter ego's way of saying “enough”. He proposes to stop and "hit bottom", only in this way will he understand what is really worth it.

Perhaps self-destruction is an exaggerated way of learning, but if the author teaches us something with these words, it is not to give up in the face of adversity. Perhaps the secret is not to achieve perfection without failing but, rather, we must take failures as a teaching and transform them into lessons to grow.

Main characters

• Storyteller: His name does not appear. He is a man who lives trapped in the routine, he works as an expert in an automobile workshop. Insomnia leads him to go to group therapy while he pretends that he is ill with cancer. His life takes a turn when he meets Tyler Durden and Marla Singer.
• Tyler Durden: He is the founder of the fight club and later of the "Project Mayhem". He fights against the consumer society. Later it is discovered that she is the product of the disorder that she suffers in narrator. Tyler Durden is the other personality of the protagonist. He presents himself as a moonlighting man who is dedicated, among other professions, to making soaps, movie projectionist and waiter.
• Marla Singer: She is a woman who, like the narrator, attends group therapy. During one of the meetings she argues with the protagonist and tries not to agree with him anymore. Later, her lives cross again when she begins a relationship with Tyler Durden.

Why read The fight Club?

You've probably heard of The fight Club, either from the novel or the film adaptation of David Fincher, which at the time had a lot of impact. Both versions deserve your attention, but especially the literary work. These are the reasons:

• It is a prose with a minimalist language that perfectly defines the "less is more". It presents a short and agile narrative that makes it easy to read from the first page.
• Because it is a imperishable novel. After more than twenty years of its publication, the questions that arise during its reading are the same today as they were then.
• It is a novel that makes you laugh, think and, although it seems superficial, it hides a deep philosophy that makes us wonder what our place is in society.

Chuck Palahniuk Biography

He is an American novelist of European descent. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a journalism degree and later worked as an editor for a local newspaper. Later he, too, made a living as a mechanic until his writing career flourished.

At thirty years of age he attended writing workshops taught by the writer Tom Spanbauer. What prompted him to write his first book Insomnia: If You Lived Here, You´d Be Home Already, which he kept in a drawer and never published. After another failed second story Invisible Monsters, in 1996 the writer wrote The fight Club, work that elevated his career.

Among his works are:

• Fight club, 1999
• Survivor, 1999
• Invisible monsters, 1999
• Suffocation, 2001
• Nana, 2002
• Diary: a novel, 2003
• Ghosts, 2005
• Rant: the life of a murderer, 2007
• Snuff, 2008
• Pygmy, 2009
• Doomed, 2011

Movie The fight Club

In 1999, director David Fincher made the adaptation of the novel into a film. The fight Club (Fight club or Fight club).

Actors of the stature of Edward Norton and Brad Pitt were in charge of interpreting the narrator and Tyler Durder respectively.

It is an adaptation, with a duration of 139 minutes, quite faithful to the novel although with some significant changes, ranging from the way the characters are known, through the variation of some scenes, to the modification of the final.

If you already enjoyed reading The fight Club, here you can see the trailer from the homonymous movie.

If you liked this article you can also read Movie fight club.