Fight Club Chapter 6
In Chapter 6 of Palahniuk's "Fight Club", the narrator discusses the rules and the origin of Fight Club. It obvious that throughout this chapter that the idea of masculinity is present. It can be suggested that the narrator prides himself on being his own man, and not in any way like his rarely talked about father. "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" (41-42). Fight club seemed to be somewhat therapeutic to the men that participated in it. Tyler Durden and the narrator are somewhat controversial in the eyes of a woman because of the way they act, speak, and carry themselves. It is evident that the narrator has genuine "gentlemen like" qualities, unlike Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden challenges the narrator's views and aspects on life by making him feel like what he is doing is not what a "man" would do. In different parts of the book, it seems as if Tyler Durden is the father-figure in the narrator's life. "A man is potent and virile because of his contribution to his progeny was greater than that of a woman" (Marafioti 250). The idea of being a man and masculinity is a dominant theme not only in chapter 6 of the novel, it is in fact dominant throughout the whole novel. "Manliness requires not just what we would now consider virile characteristics associated with the possession of a penis, but also and more specifically a man's visualization of that power through the procreation and generation of new life" (Marafioti 251). Going to fight club makes the men feel like men. "Most guys are at fight club because of something they're too scared to fight. After a few fights, you're afraid a lot less" (45). Fight club is where the men in the novel go to portray the manly side of themselves amongst other men.
In this chapter Fight Club is discovered by the narrator and Tyler. We then find out that the men lack a father figure in their lives when they were younger boys, so they feel lost and without guidance in the world. “The reasons for man destruction behavior can be traced to his physical vulnerability and his innate subconscious feeling of insignificance” (Marshall 75). To solve this problem they fight other men. Both Tyler and the narrator feel like self-destruction and not self-improvement is the only was to remove the pain that they are feeling and hopefully they will become better men. “Contemporary man has fulfilled his evolutionary purpose, but his obsession with destruction has become counterproductive to survival of human life on this planet” (Marshall 31).
Works Cited
-Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York, 1996.
-Marafioti, Martin. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, 2006.
-Marshall, Tim. Man's Greatest Fear The Final Phase of Human Evolution. United States of America: Tim Marshall, 1995.