A Psychological Analysis Of The Narrator's Voice And The Theory Of Self-realization In A Capitalist Society In The Book Fight Club

The book Fight Club written by the American author Chuck Palahniuk draws in with the idea of marginalization and disappointment of the regular workers who are yet expected to achieve American success. This battle of common laborers men in the public eye is represented in the book's main character, the narrator, a normal office worker with an ordinary way of life who looks for self-satisfaction from materialistic items. Despite Palahniuk's social analysis on capitalistic culture and manliness, he eventually asks us, the readers, to self-reflect and starts self-strengthening. The author does this by presenting the narrator's inner self, Tyler Durden, a joyful, confident man who developed 'Fight Club' where regular workers men assemble around to battle with expectations of recovering their manliness and attesting predominance as a drive to make themselves feel free and invigorated once more. Tyler Durden speaks to everything that the common laborers want and wishes to be, which can maybe be best considered through a psychological analysis done by Sigmund Freud’s structure of personality: “the ego, the superego and the id, which correspond to the consciousness, the conscience and the unconscious respectively”.

The narrator's boring way of life and serious instance of insomnia ultimately results in his loss of self-identity. This prompts having a powerless self-image, being not able to play out the solicitations of the id in a socially satisfactory way. Also, the narrator's absence of a dad figure alongside his useless family fails in giving him an inner self a piece of the superego that sets moral rules for the sense of self to pursue. The weak inner self and absence of superego clear the path for the overwhelming id-Tyler Durden, who represents the majority of his needs and desires, to take control. Tyler's appreciated status enables him to have his spot as the superego, which twists the inner self-feeling of ethical quality. This document will initially look at the association between the identity structures and the novel's main character. Therefore, this paper will investigate how mass obliteration is supported in the explanation of good and moral activities, as the narrator achieves a comprehension of his actual desires.

The ego is facilitating some portion of the mind which encounters reality as 'oneself' or 'I”. Since the narrators make use of the first person, the ego applies to the main character(the narrator). Because of his feeling of mediocrity in the public eye and his delicate feeling of character, is easy to identify the narrator with a weak ego. In the book Fight Club, the narrator's twisting view of reality and himself is an outcome of his extreme instance of insomnia. Due to this, he has the inability to sleep bringing extraordinary exhaustion and tiredness, consequently ruining his capacity to legitimately perceive and explore his environment, representing a test for him to separate from the real world and dream. In the book, the narrator states that insomnia distances everything, with this it can see the narrator's poor handle of reality. The narrator also states in the book that he sees everything as a copy of a copy, this just reiterates that losing his grasp of reality makes him hallucinate. The narrator describes insomnia as an out-of-body experience, this is how one would feel whenever put in a steady dream-like state. All of this anticipates the conscience, in the long run, losing control, With an absence of control and power, the conscience will swing to the id for help, allowing the id to take control.

The narrator feels he has hit rock bottom that he is in an urgent search for anything or anybody that could give his life some meaning. The possibility of self-realization in a capitalist society is delusional to be accomplished through materialistic merchandise, in this manner, the narrator depends on these qualities to fill the void in his life. The narrator has as a goal to create the perfect apartment all with furniture from IKEA. This emphasis he does about furniture branding uncovers himself being profoundly a piece of society's capitalism and materialistic fixation, so much that he shows pride at the measure of exertion and devotion he puts in to claim these things as he claims in the book, “it took my whole life to buy this stuff”(Fight Club, pg 44). Now he is dealing with the guilty pleasure of reaching realization through these furniture items. “ And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalog” (Fight Club, pg 43). This expression consists of contrasting IKEA furniture lists and sex entertainment. This means individuals who are as the narrator “slave to my nesting instinct” discover furniture buys invigorating and fulfilling. Even with all of these possessions the narrator's life has an empty void and no joy. The narrator's attempt to satisfy doubtful developments of the ideal self in which he attempts to appear through the “perfect” apartment, all to fill the need as an exterior for his uncertain conscience to pursue and stow away inside.

The narrator lives such a modest and dull life that a home stylistic theme isn't sufficient to fill the unfilled void he has. So, to have some joy and realization he looks for it in the suffering of others. The narrator goes to support groups where just from hearing close death encounters from cancer or blood parasite patients can the narrator sleep easily thinking better about himself and their ordinary life. The narrator's weak self pushes him to the edges of society where he can just feel warm and thought about through the suffering of other people. This exhibits the degree to which the narrator will go to look for illumination and a feeling of having a place. In this way, making him increasingly defenseless against the plans of the id that goes about as the sense of self-controlling figure and defender the two of which the narrator has wanted for quite a while.