Fight Club Essay

Fight Club: Literature vs. Cinema In the novel Fight Club, written by Chuck Palahniuk, the reader sees life through the eyes of the protagonist: an average, middle-aged man suffering from insomnia and working as a recall coordinator for a major car company. The main character, whose real name is never mentioned, lives a cookie-cutter life in a high-rise apartment building filled with IKEA furniture, a fancy car, and a monotonous job. That is, until he meets a man named Tyler Durden, thus fight club was born. Fight Club, Palahniuk’s first published novel, was such a success that it was made into a major motion picture directed by David Fincher. While the film stayed close to the themes and plot of the book, it also had many differences. To say one outdid the other is matter of opinion however, there were aspects of the film that were stronger and some weaker. One way the film amplifies the book is with its use of visuals. The dark basement of the bar where fight club was held, the rundown house on Paper Street where the narrator stays with Tyler, and the slow deterioration of the protagonist are all brought to life in the film. “Fincher presented a world that was dark, gritty and entirely unpleasant. It captured a world of corporate
This is the point in the story when fight club evolves into something much bigger, Project Mayhem. This is an element of the story that the novel did a much better job of displaying. Project Mayhem was about deconstructing civilization; the opportunity to start over again. The novel goes into depth on how the group works, including what committees it’s made up of, how homework assignments work, and what the main goal was to accomplish. In the book, the final assignment of Project Mayhem is the destruction of the Parker-Morris Building. The building, which stands next to the Museum of History, would collapse and literally wipe out