Fight Club: An Awakening to Life

Fight Club: An Awakening to Life

At one point or another, we have all felt our lives were pointless or futile. Chuck Palahniuk harnessed these feelings in his Fight Club through the use of a character, Tyler Durden. Tyler shows the people he affects how meaningless their lives had been and gives them new reasons to live.

The first life that Tyler Durden changed was essentially his own. The narrator and Tyler are actually the same person although the narrator doesn’t learn this until near the end of the book. When Tyler and the narrator first meet together, they start fight club after Tyler says, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” (46) This starts a totally different period in the narrator’s life; different from the meaningless, but content life he had been living and changes it into a life that was unstructured yet had significance. The narrator, having had his life changed by Tyler and fight club, then goes on to say, “You aren’t alive anywhere like your alive at fight club.” (51) The narrator would rather be at fight club than anywhere else in the world. Along with this the narrator says, “After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down.” (49) The narrator cannot compare his experiences at fight club to anything else in his life. Tyler Durden tore down the narrator by changing his life, but then rebuilt his life by starting fight club with him.

Tyler also changed strangers’ lives also through assignments given at fight club. Tyler ordered the members to each make twelve human sacrifices. The best example is the human sacrifice the narrator made of Raymond Hessel. The narrator takes Raymond at gunpoint and makes him explain that he has failed at becoming a veterinarian. After telling Raymond that he will kill him if he isn’t on his way to becoming a veterinarian in three months, the narrator lets him go and remarks, “Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you’ve ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your life.” (155) By doing this, the narrator has made Raymond stop