Maus Fight Club Analysis

Identity Changes

There are several events affecting substantial changes in identity in an individual throughout the novel Maus and Fight Club. In the novel Maus, Art was trying to understand his father’s identity and reasoning for him to be the way he was. In the novel Fight Club, the narrator, who was also Tyler Durden, went through many changes in identity because of the society around him. He didn’t feel as if people would remember him, so he went through different phases to make a name for himself, and create the identity he wanted for people to remember. The narrator in Fight Club attended support groups for terminal illnesses to try and find a new identity. He believed that at the support groups he could escape his empty life and become a person people really cared about. “If I didn’t say anything people assumed the worst. They cried harder. I cried harder” (Palahniuk 22). Every night the narrator took on the role as a cancer patient not only to gain acceptance, but also to experience the sadness and hopelessness that comes with seeing death firsthand and realizing sooner or later everybody is going will face death. After a while, even trying to gain sympathy of people and having them hear and understand you, wasn’t enough for the narrator. Another major event happened for the identity of the narrator to change.

Tyler Durden, suffered from many identity changes throughout the book as he tried to figure out who he actually was and trying to make a name for himself. In Maus, Art had to deal with the problems between his father and him because of the events that happened in his father’s life. The identity that was now formed after the Holocaust with Vladek was not pleasant and caused many issues with his son and him. It wasn’t until later that Art had related the holocaust events to the impact on his father’s acquired