Duality In Fight Club

The novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk’s, focuses on the middle class male demographic between the ages of 18 and 50 familiar with the contemporary life of North America in the nineties, enveloped in a consumer-driven society which lives by the motto “money walks, money talks”. Palahniuk explores the duality of the two protagonists in the context of stereotypical Americans driven by consumption and possessions living day-to- as a cog in the machine of the corporate world. Throughout the text, the author draws the reader’s attention to a nameless narrator, plagued by insomnia and detached from the world, thereby creating an alter-ego antagonist, Tyler Durden, with which to attack society. Via this persona the protagonist acts as an anti-conformist of contemporary living as depicted through the creation
The very core reason that fight club was established by Tyler under the influence of the protagonist’s unconscious mind, was to enable the middle class men who were leading a life against their internal desires, to find their true selves and gain meaning, however Project Mayhem strips them of this. They become ‘Space Monkeys’. “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.” This is a mantra that is recited by the men to one another as part of Tyler's indoctrination under Project Mayhem which ironically seeks to remove any sense of individuality from these men and their lives so that they willingly submit to Tyler, never questioning his methods or motivations. This would be straightforward if the men already saw themselves as plain and ordinary, which ironically is how they felt about themselves before they joined fight club. They have come full circle; emasculated men forced to live a consumerist life, to men who rediscover their “raw” masculinity to