Growing Up Without A Father In Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is a commentary on struggle for the search for self. The men in the story fight each other in order to assert their masculinity and in turn find a sense of self. The primary focus of the novel is on the unstable narrator, who begins the book merely as an insomniac. As the story proceeds, it is evident that The Narrator's personality is greatly affected due to severe isolation. His lack of parental figures, isolation from others, and his boring job leaves him wishing for an end to his pathetic existence. The novel’s narrator is not a full person, he is simply the portrayal of a person’s ego that lets go of the control his I.D has on him. The narrator projects this I.D externally in the shape of the character Tyler Durden. Subsequently, Tyler leads both of them on a course that is an expedition of The Narrator’s desires of destruction. In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, The Narrator develops psychological issues due to his dysfunctional relationship with his father.

Throughout the novel The Narrator is presented as very dependent on people and things to help him cope with reality. He uses objects and people in order for him to feel somewhat comfortable. At the very beginning The Narrator finds comfort in decorating his house in Ikea furniture, but once he completely filled his apartment he needed to find another vice. He soon found comfort in attending cancer support groups because it gave him a reason to cry which helped him sleep. “Walking home after support group, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt. I wasn't host to cancer or blood parasites I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around” (Palahniuk,7). Although The Narrator was not suffering from cancer he was suffering from insomnia. There was no way for him to be able to sleep on his own so he depended on the support groups to help him sleep. The support groups gave him comfort because he feels fortunate to not have a deadly disease. Soon after he got into the routine of attending these daily meetings he notices a recurring face in each of his meetings. The Narrator can no longer sleep because there is an imposter in all of his groups, he knows that she is not dying so it ruins his experience because he can not feel bad for her. “The next time we meet, I'll say, Marla, I can not sleep with you here. I need this. Get out.” (Palahniuk 9). The Narrator gets angry at the imposter because she is interfering with his sleep, which results into his old patterns of insomnia. The Narrator then depends on Marla to stop coming to the meeting in order for him to be able to sleep again. Later on in the novel, The Narrator’s house gets blown up by a leaky gas pipe, immediately he calls on his new acquaintance Tyler Durden. Although he just met Tyler, The Narrator trusts him enough to ask him for a place to stay. “Oh, Tyler, please rescue me” (Palahniuk 26) . This proves The Narrator is reliant on people for nearly everything. Instead of getting a hotel himself or figuring his situation out, he depends on a person he just met for help. Since his father was never there to teach him how to fend for himself, The Narrator taught himself to be dependant on others. His vulnerability led him to be easily influenced by Tyler Durden which in turn led The Narrator on a path of destruction.

Tyler is the suppressed and idealized man that The Narrator wants to become. Tyler plays the role of a father figure to The Narrator, showing him the need for authority and aggression. Tyler Durden is The Narrator's split personality. He was created by a perfect mix of The Narrator's insomnia-induced insanity and his frustration with his bland life. Tyler Durden is an expression of the totally free person The Narrator wishes he could be. “I am nothing in the world compared to Tyler. I am helpless. I am stupid, and all I do is want and need things.” (Palahniuk,125). The Narrator wishes to be as carefree as his counterpart Tyler Durden. It is obvious in this quote that The Narrator looks up to Tyler as a father figure. Because he never had a father to show him what being a man was like, he created Tyler Durden to be that fatherly image. By creating Tyler Durden he started his descent into madness and self-destruction. “This was the goal of Project Mayhem, Tyler said, the complete and right-away destruction of civilization.”(Palahniuk 78). Throughout the story, Tyler attempts to forcibly guide The Narrator to enlightenment by encouraging him to hit rock bottom. He wanted to gradually destroy The Narrator's already hollow self. If he had succeeded, there would have no longer been any distinction between The Narrator and Tyler, and the split Tyler Durden persona would not have been needed anymore. The Narrator would fully transform into Tyler Durden. However by the end of the story, Tyler realizes that he failed. The Narrator remained firmly opposed to Tyler's goals and viewed Tyler's attempt to enlighten him as a belligerent takeover of his mind. He never reached the full understanding that Tyler Durden was his real personality. Due to his father's absence, The Narrator unconsciously forms an alter personality to substitute that parental figure, which leads to his downward spiral.

With no good male examples in his life The Narrator has accepted the role of men in society as it has been shown to him by the media. In society males are shown to be dominant and aggressive and because of this The Narrator believes that is what a man should be. The fight club is not made to be a solution to the character's problems, but as a means of achieving a spiritual awakening. “Most guys are at fight club because of something they’re too scared to fight.” (Palahniuk 77). The Narrator sees fight club as a way of proving his masculinity, he and the other members join and participate in hopes of reaching their full masculine potential. They fight psychically because they can not fight the issues they have in their own lives. The Narrator never truly knew what it was like to be a man because his father left when he was really young, so he unconsciously started the fight club in order to become a man. 'Maybe self-improvement is not the answer. Tyler never knew his father. Maybe self-destruction is the answer.' (Palahniuk 49). Just like The Narrator, Tyler also grew up without a father figure, since they both do not have a father figure The Narrator continues to idolize Tyler. He thinks that Tyler handles growing up without a father much better than him and wants to follow his footsteps of self-destruction. Tyler and The Narrator see themselves as rejected from the beginning of their existence by their own fathers, who probably never really wanted them in the first place. In order to move beyond this internal struggle and feeling of rejection Tyler proposes getting to the core of yourself by self-destruction. Once you get to your core you will be able to find out who you really are and you can then build yourself back up. ''If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?' (Palahniuk 140). Spoken by the mechanic to The Narrator on their drive to the medical waste dump, the mechanic sums up Tyler's ideology regarding his issues with his father. Tyler’s disconnect with his father is the reason he is set on self-destruction which in turn leads The Narrator on the same path. Since Tyler is The Narrator’s other personality, all of the things Tyler says are the things The Narrator unconsciously thinks.

Fight Club is a novel full of many twists and turns, each character having a story of their of own. The story reveals itself not only as an exploration of the human psyche but also it reveals that the lack of a father figure can create the kind of individual that possesses such an out of shape reality. With no male role model to teach him how to fend for himself, The Narrator taught himself to be dependant on others. Tyler’s disconnect with his father is the reason he is set on a path of self-destruction which in turn leads The Narrator on the same path. Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club showcases the negative effects lack of a father figure can a man.