Breaking away from materialism

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is definitely a book of controversies regarding contemporary issues. While some of his ideas make sense, I find others very subjective. He seemed to hold a grudge against his parents particularly his father who, just like the narrator’s father left the family when the author was only six year old. His anger towards the circumstances that led him to be raised by a woman appeared in his writings in Fight Club. I personally think that Fight Club; besides dealing with some twenty first century matters, is the story of Palahniuk himself and his personal problems.

No one denies the fact that a good society breeds good citizens. But when a society starts to show failures within its system, we start to wonder about the causes and the roots of those failures. Fight Club is certainly a novel that deals with some of the issues that became apparent and obvious in this twenty first century. As the main character of Fight Club, the unnamed narrator was suffering from a modern syndrome that was tormenting him, a condition related to today’s lifestyle, where everybody is working hard to fulfill certain desires that the narrator rejects and opposes. Consumer culture, one of the contemporary issues in the book, as Dr. Martin described it – built on a cycle of temporary satisfaction, deflation and renewed desire- was the reasons that turned the unnamed narrator in someone lost, but not hopeless. His desires were very different from those who turn to material things to feel rewarded and content. The narrator was desperately searching for a metaphysical and incorporeal fulfillment that would give him a reason to feel that he exists as someone different from any other materialistic human being. The character of Tyler in the book and the narrator’s unusual attachment to him was a way of easing the pain and the agony that were accumulated in the narrator’s spirit over the years. Starting Fight Club with Tyler was the best thing that the narrator started his new life with, after moving in with Tyler. But Fight Club could never be the answer and the final solution to solve the matter of “consumer culture” that made the narrator search for an alternative to an empty life that he could no longer accept.

The author made his points clear to the readers, but some readers would find his views on consumer culture a bit exaggerated. Palahniuk ignored the fact that every human being has desires that don’t necessarily conform to his personal opinions. Feeling satisfied and fulfilled differs from one individual to another. Wanting material things is definitely not sinful, as long as it does not make the consumer trapped in his or her own world of fantasies. Obviously the narrator felt that his life had no meaning so he chose a different path, a path that would make him break away from what the rest of the people think is essential and vital. In Fight Club, the detailed description of his apartment had a great significance to justify his new life with Tyler. It definitely shows how the narrator started to see life from a different angle, an angle that could fulfill his life, and give him a reason to live.