Fight Club's Empowering Philosophy On Death And Loss

1440 Words6 Pages

Fight Club 's Empowering Philosophy on Death and Loss

Death and loss are problems that plague everyone and things that most people

desperately try to avoid. Minimizing loss is a major focus for many people in life, and some would even argue that the inevitability of death makes life futile. However, Chuck Palahniuk 's Fight Club makes a point to teach how integral death and loss are in everyday lives, and how intrinsically they are linked with an individual 's change and development through their life. Death and loss are necessary evils in life that keep one from stagnating and inspire them to move forward; Fight Club wants to not only empower you to take hold of your own life and seize the day, but it wants you to see how important all …show more content…

Without death there is nothing to give life meaning, nothing to make a person recognize the importance of what he already has; Fight Club understands this. While holding Raymond K. Hessel at gunpoint, the narrator says, "But after that, how did you want to spend your life? If you could do anything in the world. Make something up. You didn 't know. Then you 're dead right now, I said. I said, now turn your head. Death to commence in ten, in nine, in eight. A vet, you said. You want to be a vet, a veterinarian" (Palahniuk 154). Raymond didn 't know how he wanted to spend his life or what he wanted to do, meaning he is "dead right now". This is because he 's not really living his life, he 's simply stagnant and coasting along. He 's not working towards anything or giving his life meaning, thus if he 's not really living, he 's basically already dead. Not until forced to confront his own mortality, when his life is literally counting down in front of him, does the importance of what he wants out of life take center-stage. After this, Raymond K. Hessel is allowed to live as long as he works towards his goal, as long as he tries to seize the life he wants. Without the realization of his own mortality, without knowing that his entire existence can be gone any moment, he would have continued to live a static life. Through this confrontation he is motivated to end this stagnation, and get his life truly