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Masculinity In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

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Fight Club is a modern classic in which an unnamed narrator forms a fight club with Tyler Durden, a soap maker. The two men’s personalities are very different, with the narrator being somewhat reasonable yet troubled, while Tyler Durden strives to overthrow and destroy society and its values. Fight Club morphs into Project Mayhem, which turns a recreational fighting group into a small terrorist organization. Near the end of the novel, it is revealed that the narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person. The narrator then tries to kill himself in order to end Tyler’s attacks on society. The message about modern culture gained from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is that balance is required in order for society to succeed, be it balance of masculinity …show more content…

The men’s desire to use their masculinity to abolish femininity is part of what leads to project mayhem. Since their are no female members of fight club, the men could come up with anything and not be debated about it, as they all had a common goal. If there was a healthy balance of males and females in fight club, than the men would probably have not have gotten as fed up with femininity in society as they did. Therefore, the lack of balance between masculinity and femininity led to the creation of a small terrorist organization. The members of fight club rising up against the upper-class had many negative effects. Hatred of the upper-class contributed more to the creation of project mayhem than the imbalance of masculinity, as the main goal of project mayhem was to topple society. Tyler Durden was tired of feeling like a cockroach under the rich giants’ feet, and therefore decided to engage in many dangerous attacks on society, such as attacking people and blowing up buildings. It is all of this that leads to the narrator having to shoot himself in the head in order to stop Tyler’s reign of destruction against the upper-class. However, even though Tyler is gone, it may be too late to stop what he

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However, despite being “unsure of their futures, with nowhere to direct their anger and no one to assuage their fears” (GEN X – SITE SOURCE), the characteristic of Generation X which really draws parallels to Palahniuk’s novel is the high divorce rate of the time. The impact of an influential feminized society is yet again bolstered by the norm of a woman being in complete control as a result of fathers leaving the household. In the novel, Jack mentions his absent father, and thus begins seeing a father figure in Tyler after having lacked strong male models whilst growing up. To the cohort of members in Fight Club feeling effeminate as a result, Tyler concludes that they are a “generation of men raised by women” (PAGE), further nourishing the men’s desire to fight and express their wrath to regain their identities. Due to their upbringing, the men in Fight Club lack a masculine portrayal, and hence idealize Tyler as the sole example of what masculinity should be.

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