The Aesthetics Of Pain And Suffering: A Study Of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club

Late 20th-century American fiction saw a rise in the themes that were prominent if not exclusive to the postmodern or post-war era. These fictions consist of an alienated and lonely individual striving against the emptiness of this world. In these texts, it was asserted that modern economic, technological, demographic, and political changes have transformed the individual life and social structure of American society. These transformed social and cultural norms have produced a sense of confusion and frustration among individuals. Quest for one‘s identity, the sense of belongingness, the idea of rootlessness, and cultural isolation have collectively produced a sense of alienation among the individuals. Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club foreshadows the modern themes of alienation, failure, frustration, futility, disharmony, isolation, rootlessness, and absurdity as inescapable conditions of life.

Fight Club (1996) is the first novel published by Chuck Palahniuk. After the film adaptation, the novel becomes very popular among young, male American readers. The basic narrative of the novel depicts the narrator’s suffering from insomnia due to his frequent business trips. To counter this feeling of insomnia he seeks support in attending support groups for the critically ill, This is at these support groups he unconsciously develops an idealized “alter ego” who is named Tyler Durden in the text (Giles 25). Tyler Durden is basically none other than his split personality with whom he establishes Fight Club – “a gradually growing group of men meeting in basements just to fight each other and thus feel powerful and free for several minutes” (Giles 25). Fight club gradually turns into “Project Mayhem”, whose main purpose is to use public assaults and pranks to draw people‘s attention to inequalities of the capitalist, consumerist society (12). When the project gets out of hand, the nameless narrator realizes that Tyler is in fact just a product of his mind, a mere illusion who is active only in the insomniac state of the narrator and tries to stop the project. Even though the conclusion of the novel is ambiguous, he obviously fails in this attempt. The narrator is so dissociated from reality that for him “everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”). The Narrator inhabits a world in which 'nobody cared if he lived or died, and the feeling was fucking mutual' (Fight Club 113). He attends cancer support groups to get someone to listen to him, to experience the human warmth denied to him for the rest of his life. The novel presents the narrator’s views that explain his fascination with such experiences when he says, “This is why I loved support groups so much if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention” (107). Indeed, the narrator is not dying like many of the other men who attend the support groups, but for him to be a faker in such circumstances is as authentic as he can manage.

The main focus of the novel is on the narrator, who is suffering from insomnia from the very onset of the novel. As the novel progresses we see that narrator’s personality has been split by the alienation that he suffers from. His lack of a father figure, lack of interaction with others, systematic lifestyle, and boring job have left him wanting to die in a plane crash. This novel is a story of alienation and rootlessness. It also comprises the themes of displacement, exile, and the quest for identity. Fight Club is the story of a lost individual who struggles to maintain his identity and feels isolated from society. The reasons for this estrangement when analyzed can be categorized as based on the social structure of the society and the psychological disorders resulting mainly due to the coercive society.

The eminent social-psychologist and critic Erich Fromm in his book The Sane Society maintain that man is alienated from society when he subsides under the authoritative power of society and tries to conform to the people of the society. In this way, he loses his individuality. He can realize his real self only when he establishes his individuality. This can be achieved only by not always essentially conforming to society. The Fight Club and the Project Mayhem invented by the narrator seem to be such an endeavor wherein he tries to go against society thus exerting his individuality. It is a sort of defense mechanism to recover his individuality from which he has been alienated by real society. Although it is apparent from the text that he is not successful in his attempts and the ending of the novel does not lead to any concrete conclusion.

The novel opens with Tyler squeezing the barrel of a firearm against the narrator. The novel is organized by a broadened flashback with the storyteller, holding a weapon in his mouth, clarifying how he met Tyler, joined and afterward opposed both Fight Club and Project Mayhem, and now winds up, at the end of the casing, occupied with a fight with Tyler in a monetary building set up with Tyler's bombs. This scene is in fact the culmination of the narrator’s attempt to attain a sense of self-empowerment and independence from the forces which have heretofore shaped his life. When he becomes aware of the fact that Tyler is none other than his own self who becomes active during nights, his belief and confidence in Tyler are shattered. For him, Tyler was a father figure and hence equivalent to God. He had been looking up to him for love, affection, and freedom. Since Tyler himself was a very powerful figure for the narrator he believes that it is only Tyler who can provide him with the power that he always craves. But with this revelation that Tyler was just an illusion of his own self, his struggle against the means of alienation ended insignificantly.

Erich Fromm in his book Fear from Freedom describes the sadistic and masochistic tendencies as an “escape from an unbearable aloneness” (122). He maintains that the most frequent forms in which masochistic strivings appear are feeling of inferiority, powerlessness, and individual insignificance. In an analysis of persons who are obsessed with these feelings, he states that while these persons are conscious of the feelings and complain about them, unconsciously there is some power within themselves that “drives them to feel inferior or insignificant” (122). Most frequently these people will depend upon powers outside themselves. These powers include but are not confined to, some other person or institutions or nature. Such people show submissive behavior and generally, they are not interested in being assertive. “Life, as a whole, is felt by them as something overwhelmingly powerful, which they cannot master or control” (123). Furthermore, Erich Fromm states that under such circumstances, these people develop a tendency to “hurt oneself and to make oneself suffer” (Fear 123). Persons who have such tendencies to harm themselves, “tend to torture themselves with compulsory rites and thoughts” (123). More often such kinds of compulsive neurotics have an unconscious tendency to incur accidents and harm themselves or the things to which they are attached. Erich Fromm delineates one kind of category of people undergoing these masochistic tendencies “who say things which antagonize them whom they love or on whom they are dependent, although actually they feel friendly towards them and did not intend to say those things” (123). Such individuals seem to be under the influence of some external agency and carrying out their orders.

This observation of Erich Fromm is quite relevant to the plot of Fight Club as the main protagonist of the novel undergoes both sadistic and masochistic tendencies. In the very first chapter, when the readers get an impression that Tyler is trying to shot dead the narrator, it is in fact, the narrator himself who is holding the barrel of the gun to himself and is on the verge of killing himself and thus committing suicide. For the narrator, “this is not really death” but killing himself will make him a “legend” and thus he won’t grow old wasting his life insignificantly (Fight Club 11). This is a severe case of masochism in which an individual is obsessed with self-destruction and this obsession could even lead to suicide. “Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer,” Fight Club’s narrator imagines. “Maybe self-destruction is the answer” (49). Emine Şarkdemir in his thesis titled Desiring Machines/Bodies Without Organs: The Concept of Body In Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, Invisible Monsters and Choke maintains that the characters of Palahniuk’s novel move beyond the territories of social institutions and choose violence as the best practice to break the chains of social authority. These characters “who desire to destroy the social control on their bodies direct violence to their own bodies in schizophrenic, masochistic and psychotic ways and destroy the organization of their bodies on which repression is exercised” (Sarkdemir vii). It is also interesting to note the developmental sequence of the aforementioned condition. An analysis of the narrative reveals that the development of this extreme condition of masochism was a gradual process. Before culminating in the extreme form of masochism as a means to escape from alienation, the narrator has undergone frequent forms of it. In the most frequent form, it originates in the sense of powerlessness felt by the narrator. Powerlessness implies helplessness and consists of “the feeling that one’s destiny is not under one’s own control but is determined by external agents, fate, luck, or institutional arrangements” (“Alienation”). Man finds himself unable to stand against the opposing force bringing about his downfall. Melvin Seeman an eminent social-psychologist and critic categorizes powerlessness as one of the variants of alienation and adds that “this variant of alienation can be conceived as the expectancy or probability held by the individual that his own behavior cannot determine the occurrence of the outcomes, or reinforcements, he seeks” (784; emphasis in original). This is the notion of alienation as it originated in the Marxian view of the worker's condition in capitalist society: the worker is alienated to the extent that the prerogative and means of decision are expropriated by the ruling entrepreneurs (Seeman 784). Seeman notes that while Marx’s notion of alienation was confined to the industrial sphere only in Weber's work, we find an extension beyond the industrial sphere of the Marxian notion of powerlessness (784). He quotes Gerth and Mills remarks on this extension:

Marx's emphasis upon the wage-worker as being ‘separated from the means of production becomes, in Weber's perspective, merely one special case of a universal trend. The modern soldier is equally ‘separated’ from the means of violence; the scientist from the means of inquiry, and the civil servant from the means of administration. (qt. in Seeman 784)

This variant of alienation as the masochistic striving is best seen in the career of the narrator. From the very beginning, the narrator appears powerless before his aspirations which are apt to violate social values. It can be analyzed that the narrator is overwhelmed by a feeling of his own powerlessness and incompetence. The author portrays him as a dissatisfied white young man, who spends most of his time working for a big company, does not have enough excitement in his life, spends his money buying products he is attracted to through advertisements, and generally feels alone and assumes himself as a slave of materialistic culture. He runs away from freedom by offering his own self to an agency that he considers outside of himself. For him “This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom” (Fight Club 22). He submits himself to Tyler because he feels that Tyler is powerful and in fact, he turns into an automaton run completely in the directions of his master Tyler. Erich Fromm termed this authority over an individual of an external agency as “authoritarianism” and states it in the following manner:

The first mechanism of escape from the freedom I am going to deal with is the tendency to give up the independence of one's own individual self and to fuse one's self with somebody or something outside oneself to acquire the strength which the individual self is lacking. Or, to put it in different words, to seek new, 'secondary bonds' as a substitute for the primary bonds which have been lost. The more distinct forms of this mechanism are to be found in the striving for submission and domination, or, as we would rather put it, in the masochistic and sadistic strivings as they exist in varying degrees in normal and neurotic persons respectively. (Fear 122)

Fromm explores and presents the psychological and social mechanisms that lead an individual to be afraid of freedom and to prefer to give it up. They appear as the tendency to be led by a ‘superior’ power and to behave like a social automaton conforming to a role assigned to him by others or by circumstances. And there is also the drive to destructiveness (towards others or himself) when the feeling of powerlessness is overwhelming. In all these cases freedom to conduct his/her own personal and social life is nowhere to be seen.

In the whole novel, the narrator has been presented as a submissive fellow. He submits to his boss for his salary, he submits to Bob for sympathy, he submits to Marla because she would not compromise with her sessions for the support group and finally he submits to his own alter-ego Tyler because he finds him as a superior and powerful being. This whole process of his submission to external agencies is in fact a phenomenon to establish secondary bonds i.e. relationship via a more powerful mediator. It is also evident that this whole act of submission is culturally patterned. Erich Fromm states that this act of submissiveness is concurrent with religious idolatry. In idolization, an individual submits to a being which he considers superior to himself and ultimately presents himself as an inferior one.

Every act of submissive worship is an act of alienation and idolatry in this sense. What is frequently called 'love' is often nothing but this idolatrous phenomenon of alienation; only that not God or an idol, but another person is worshiped in this way. The 'loving' person in this type of submissive relationship, projects all his or her love, strength, thought, into the other person, and experiences the loved person as a superior being, finding satisfaction in complete submission and worship. This does not only mean that he fails to experience the loved person as a human being in his or her reality, but that he does not experience himself in his full reality, as the bearer of productive human powers. Just as in the case of religious idolatry, he has projected all his richness into the other person, and experiences this richness not anymore as something which is his, but as something alien from himself, deposited in somebody else, with which he can get in touch only by submission to, or submergence in the other person. (Sane 120)

The narrator projects all his love, strength, and thoughts into Tyler Durden. He sees him as a savior, a messiah who has the capability to change the world. In other words, it can be safely assumed that Tyler Durden is the idealized self of the narrator, everything he wishes to be. Tyler Durden the other half of the narrator’s personality is strong enough to bring change in the chaotic world. He is majestic and self-sufficient, the entity which is complete and self-dependent. He is the one on whom lies the onus to empower and enlighten the dark labyrinths of the world. While Tyler is strong dynamic and self-sustaining, the narrator has a personality in complete contrast to that of Tyler. This is why he has merged his own self with that of Tyler. The narrator’s move into Tyler’s house signals the beginning of a power shift in which Tyler becomes progressively more dominant and the narrator begins increasingly to emulate Tyler. It is definitely no coincidence that it is Tyler, the alternate personality, who has a name, while the narrator, the apparent host identity, does not. “The Narrator is essentially a cipher, a non-entity. In many respects, Tyler has more “substance,” and certainly more backbone, than the Narrator does” (Steven 25). He extols, “I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not” (Fight Club 174).

This is in complete consonance with what Erich Fromm has termed as the “idolatrous phenomenon of alienation” (Sane 120). It is not that the narrator fails to experience Tyler as a human being, but he does not see himself as an active bearer of all his activities and hence diminishes his own self-image. He does not realize himself as a complete human being and that is why he gives all the credit for the deeds which actually he himself commits to Tyler Durden. The common result of externalization of passions, according to Fromm, is the process of alienation which he defines as “the fact that man does not experience himself as the active bearer of his own powers and richness, but as an impoverished 'thing', dependent on powers outside himself, unto whom he has projected his living substance” (Sane 121; italics in original). Tyler part to the narrator’s split self subjugates his real self, repeatedly by making him believe that he will get empowered. He inflicts a chemical burn on the narrator’s hand by wetting his hand with a kiss and then applies lye on it to inflict a chemical burn. Tyler then disallows the narrator from applying vinegar that would relieve him from the pain until he surrenders to the pain. “It’s only after we’ve lost everything,” Tyler intones, “that we’re free to do anything” (70). Tyler emphasizes that he is endeavoring to enable the Narrator to “evolve” in reality, he is inciting him to submit. Tyler has chosen the way of devastation and debacle for the salvation of the narrator. 'Disaster is a natural part of [you're] evolution, Tyler whispered, toward tragedy and dissolution” (110).

It is worth noticing that initially when the narrator joins the support group he does not cry. Not until he meets Bob, the big moose who is suffering from testicular cancer. Bob is more like the narrator because like the narrator he is also alienated from the stereotypical male gender. He has his testicles removed and therefore he does not conform to the male sex. “Big Bob functions as an ironic embodiment of the narrator’s own fear of emasculation” (Giles 25). The narrator is also symbolically castrated because he is not a typical male who conforms to masculine norms. Ronald F. Levant in his work Masculinity Reconstructed describes masculine norms as “avoidance of femininity; restricted emotions; sex disconnected from intimacy; pursuit of achievement and status; self-reliance; strength and aggression, and homophobia” (9). Thus in this sense, he is alienated from the male gender to which he belongs biologically but not socially. This understanding is also exemplified by Lynn M Ta in her article “Hurt So Good: Fight Club, Masculine Violence, and the Crisis of Capitalism” where she maintains that the narrator’s “melancholic sadomasochism is the product of what he perceives to be the feminization of late capitalism; as a corporate drone, he feels victimized by a culture that has stolen his manhood” (266). Fight club is the place where the narrator and many more like him could be real men. “Fight club gets to be your reason for going to the gym and keeping your hair cut short and cutting your nails. The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says” (50). The final rule of the fight club is that if it is your first night at fight club, you have to fight. After the fight the individual gains the self-confidence “and trusts himself to handle anything” (51). The violent measures towards which the narrator gets inclined are his attempts to recover his lost masculinity that he believes is the outcome of victimization and feminization by his culture. Consequently, the narrator’s personality splits into a sadistic and masculine Tyler and a masochistic and feminine unnamed narrator. Michael Kaufman’s observations are concurrent in this regard when he states that that “men might direct the buried pain against themselves in the forms of self-hate, self-deprecation, physical illness, insecurity, or addictions,” to “experience a momentary sense of power and control” (Theorizing 150). This sense of power although short-lived is provided by Fight Club and Project Mayhem where men assert their manhood. As this narrative reveals, the wounding and masochism of Fight Club are key to the text's construction of masculine identity, making Fight Club another example of what the author of the book Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis Sally Robinson has identified as a “dominant or master narrative of white male decline” prevalent in post-sixties, white-male American fiction (2). Sally Robinson argues that white men are tempted by the possibilities of pain and the surprisingly pleasurable tensions that come from living in crisis.

Erich Fromm has stressed the need for brotherly love that he elaborates as “the most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love” to overcome the sense of alienation (Art 47). Furthermore, he maintains that this type of love “is the force that keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, society” and without this love, 'humanity could not exist for a day” (Art 18). He means the love in “the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life” (Art 47). Fromm holds that the principle of capitalism is incompatible with the principle of love because he believes that capitalism “is based on each one seeking his own advantage' and 'is governed by the principle of egotism” (Art 132). Thus the only solution that the book Fight Club seems to provide for the problems of isolation and disintegration is a constant and affirmative change in the behavior of the individual.