A Literary Analysis of Fight Club

Fight Club is a famous novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, and it is one of my favorite novels written to this day.  The novel shows a skillful use of literary techniques to deliver its driving messages on masculinity and consumerism.
Fight Club's appeal seems to be towards an audience in the young adult age range, as the setting and characters match the average young adult description: Out of college, working in fields they don't enjoy, angry at society around them.  The rhetoric of the novel and the character dialogue suggest this as well.  Our characters are anti-heroes that are full of raw emotions; such as Tyler Durden's overwhelming amounts of masculinity and radicalism, and the narrator’s fits of jealousy and discontent.  Actions taken are raw and extreme in nature, and the exigence of the story carries symbolic meaning in the messages Palahniuk aims to deliver.  The disastrous events in the story take place because of the destructive nature of the average man’s upbringing.  The entire climactic scene of the narrator coming to terms with his own flaws to defeat his alter ego takes place in the midst of a planned terror attack on the city’s major buildings. 
The novel’s constraints have been widened over time, as the book gained a popular movie adaptation.  The film adaptation not only kept most of its source material from the book, it also drew more connections to the book’s overall messages through film technique and added dialogue.  Certain scenes were changed and rewritten to make the story flow better.  The story itself is not confined to a single genre, as there are several elements of thriller and mystery novels as well as intense drama.

Fight Club saw a great deal of circulation, and it received critical success upon its publishing.  The film adaptation did not do well in the box office, but it later gained a cult following.  This led to greater exposure of the novel, and the text gained a resurgence in sales amongst a younger audience.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Assemblage

Image
The assemblage can be separated into two categories: ethical and unethical.  The difference between these two categories are decided by use and meaning of the pieces that make up the assemblage.  In order to break these two categories down, I will provide two examples. The first example is one of an ethical assemblage.  An ethical assemblage takes pieces that were not created by the assemblage's creator and applies them in a unique way that creates a new message.  The following assemblage is a horror remake of the Cat in the Hat movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9KZ6DkbZ_M Notice how the addition of horror elements to the Cat in the Hat movie changes the entire message and meaning of the movie itself.  The consumer of this text will gain a unique experience from a piece made of multiple unoriginal pieces.  The author of the assemblage has ethically used the assemblages parts to contribute a new idea to the world of text. An unethical example woul...
Read more

Project 2: Race to the Finish

1. What actual real-life steps still need to be done to finalize this project? The only step I need to finalize my project would be to print it out.  A short story can be read digitally, but I would prefer to be able to have it in the form of a hard copy. 2. What are the three strongest parts? The three strongest parts are: -the story staying true to the nature of the edited film trailer -the overall "horror" tone of the story -the language and verbiage to match a more adult, thriller-style text 3. What are the three weakest parts? The three weakest parts are: -the possible break from the original "Dr. Seuss" voice (although the movie itself does this as well) -the lack of eye-catching visual elements such as a cover -the reach to an unconventional audience dissimilar to the audience of the movie 4. What are two "alternative" remixes you could do? -a story more formatted towards the style of an illustrated children's novel to play o...
Read more

Evocative Objects: A Response

Today, we as a class were given the task of bringing five evocative objects about ourselves for sharing and feedback.  My evocative objects were my water bottle, an elbow brace, headphones, my wallet, and my phone.  This post is a collection of my feelings on the feedback I was given. "He likes dark colors and music" "Likes darker colors, carries important life needs, likes music and technology" "Likes the color black" These are fair comments.  Black is the most stylish of colors.  This is a scientific fact. "Grey and technical, function, enjoys technology" "Likes music and technology" "Listens to music on the go" "Protective of their things (phone case)" These also feel accurate.  I'm guessing that for the mot part, my objects did a good job in representing who I am. "Has a knee injury" "This person has a knee problem" "This person is injured" "Knee injury...
Read more