Fight Club - Character Analysis
Uploaded by ErAzAnGeL on Feb 04, 2002
“Fight Club” by Chuck Palahnuik follows the crazy, madcap life of a man who attempts to escape the system that is life by creating mayhem in the world. The main character, the narrator, throughout the book, remains nameless. He is “Mr Ordinary Joe”, he goes to work, he does his job, he comes home, and he spends his money. His job as an auto-recall supervisor is eventless and is one of the main reasons he does not like his life. He has no real friends, and all the time he has free he spends attempting to upgrade the appearance of his home, and the appearance of his life. He becomes disillusioned by life, and is constantly thinking of ways he could die accidentally, or ways he could manage to escape his pain. He eventually drives himself to insomnia, and finds no medical help or support. His doctor suggests that if he wants to see real pain, that he should go round to the local church one night to see support groups for survivors of Testicular Cancer, and other people who have survived terrible ordeals. He decides that he should go round and see, because he has nothing else to do due to his lack of social life. The narrator finds that by going to these support groups, he can let all of his pent up emotion go, and in due course, be able to sleep. In my opinion, this part of the story is one of the turning points for the narrator’s life, due to the fact that the narrator has never felt so low in his life and is now going to support groups to try and boost his ego.
All goes well until a woman by the name of Marla Singer comes to the support groups. Marla only comes along to the groups to make fun of the people who are there, and to make sure that her life is not as worthless as theirs. The narrator finds that around Marla he cannot let his feelings go, and cannot cry. He returns to having insomnia. He decides to split his support groups with Marla, because he needs these groups to be able to sleep at night. This suggests that he felt insecure about his life, and needed someone else worse off than him to be around to make him feel better. Also, the fact that he could not...