Preview

Fight Club: the Destruction of Society

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
792 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Fight Club: the Destruction of Society
Fight Club is a social satire directed by the talented David Fincher and was adapted from the book of the same title written by Chuck Palahniuk. The film attempts to show the despair involved in living in a consumer driven society and the emptiness that fills people when commercialism takes over their lives. As well done as the movie is, when watching the film you can not help but feel the irony involved that Brad Pitt delivers the most biting lines in the film. Brad Pitt plays Tyler Durden whose Unabomber philosophy on life completely contradicts Brad Pitt's image as a poster child for the new young pretty boy Hollywood star. Interestingly enough Edward Norton and Brad Pitt play the same schizophrenic character; though this is not evident until the end of the film. Every scene in the movie is some form of social commentary, because of this it is necessary to limit the scope to the most interesting scenes. The "narrator" played by Edward Norton is as he describes himself: "I was the warm little center of the universe that the delight of this world crowded around." He has it all, a good job, nice clothes and even a nice place to live. Despite all the things the narrator has, he still feels hollow and incomplete. In the beginning he believes that this emptiness can be filled with personal possessions, but eventually through his relationship with Tyler Durden he learns that his emptiness is something deeper.
The narrator was looking for a way to change his life and put meaning back into his existence; to do this he created Tyler Durden as and alter ego. The narrator wanders through his humdrum life for the first thirty minutes of the film. During this time he is creating Tyler, while this is happening the director splices in single frames of Brad Pitt at 7 key locations of the narrators despair. Tyler is everything the narrator wishes he could be and as Tyler says: "I look like you want to look; I fuck like you want to fuck; I am smart, capable and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The film Inglorious Basterds is a film about WWII in Nazi occupied France. Throughout the film there is a narrator who comes in at random places describing little plot details that without him the audience would not know, nor mostly even care about. He uses moments of time, sometimes without even saying anything, to describe things that may be false and may be true. This is the same thing with Tim O'Brien; he has whole chapters dedicated to a self inserted explanation of what is going on, sometimes telling the audience that the previous story wasn't real, and sometimes adding detail that one would think isn't necessarily relevant to the plot. This happens in Inglorious Basterds many times; once this happens where the narrator doesn't say anything, but shows the audience a five second blip of two people, who we already assumed were sleeping together despite both of their spouses, having violent sex. This had no point to the plot it seemed at the time, however when the reader looks back on it, it fit with the theme of war and the reality of some of the more hushed aspects of it, making it more of a war story than it would have been without that five second scene.…

    • 931 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Caleb Meyer is established as a lonely, drunken abusive male whose purpose in the artifact is to create conflict to allow resolution (he rapes the narrator and pays the price). The narrator is a married woman whose husband has left her home alone while away on business. Her function is to tell a story and create Welch’s message. She is established as religious (prays to God and believes in Hell [Caleb Meyer your ghost is gonna wear them rattling chains]), brave, and resilient. Meyer represents the abusive, alcoholic male figure in society, while the narrator represents women who are taken advantage of and decide to put up a fight. A secondary character, Nellie Kane, is minimally important but adds to the severity of Meyer’s actions, as he is the narrator’s husband whom Meyer knows is not around to protect…

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In everyday life, we see many examples of the flaws of humans and narrators. For example, CNN and Fox News are both news channels who usually have the same stories that they report on. CNN could report on the story from a more Liberal standpoint but Fox News could report on the same story but from a more Conservative standpoint. Whose story would you trust? That is the main flaw about our society and about people in general, is that we lie or re-write a story to fit what we believe or what we want to hear, instead of telling the full truth. Sometimes, these traits are similar even in fictional stories, when they involve the narrator. Narrators expose flaws when they introduce themselves in their conversations and actions. In the short story…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fight Club Film Analysis

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Fight Club “Its only after we’ve lost everything are we free to do anything”, Tyler Durden as (Brad Pitt) states, among many other lines of contemplation. In Fight Club, a nameless narrator, a typical “everyman,” played as (Edward Norton) is trapped in the world of large corporations, condominium living, and all the money he needs to spend on all the useless stuff he doesn’t need. As Tyler Durden says “The things you own end up owning you.” Fight Club is an edgy film that takes on such topics as consumerism, the feminization of society, manipulation, cultism, Marxist ideology, social norms, dominant culture, and the psychiatric approach of the human id, ego, and super ego. “It is a film that surrealistically describes the status of the American…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fight Club is a movie based a man deemed “Jack”. He could be any man in the working class, that lives and ordinary life. The movie starts out giving an overview of his life, which consisted of a repeat of flights and cubicles. He is basically to the point of break when he takes another business flight and meets a man that calls himself Tyler Durdan. They instantly become friends and after an unfortunate explosion in “jack’s” apartment, he moves in with Tyler. One night after last call at a local bar, Jack and Tyler start fighting in the parking lot for no reason other than essentially to feel free and do something other than the norm. Later in the film this bar-back fight turns into a club run by the both of the men, or so it seems. At the apex of the film it is learned that Tyler, even though much drama has gone on seemingly side by side, is a figment of “Jack’s” imagination. “Jack” is very surprised by this because he does not remember being the places where Tyler had visited, but when he visits these places he acknowledged as have been there. In the film “Jack” essentially kills Tyler by blowing his own brains out with a gun, freeing himself. Though as a well versed student of psychology I know this is not a valid treatment for what “Jack” has.…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, the main character is presented as a lifeless, dull person. He leads a consumerist life where his possessions are what he values and are what he believes form him as a person. Once his condominium gets blown up, he believes his personal identity gets destroyed. He also has insomnia, and in order to resolve it he goes to support groups for people with terrible conditions. He cries with them, which allows him to sleep peacefully. In Sam Mendes’ American Beauty, Lester Burnham is introduced as a man who seems to be living the American dream. However, it is far from the truth. Every day he goes to the job he hates, only to come home to have another dinner where he gets criticized by his wife and child who despise him. It is only when the influential side characters Tyler and Ricky are introduced that the main characters begin to have hope that their miserable lives could still be saved. It is evident that the narrator and Lester share one main conflict: their lives are filled with emptiness and they are both struggling on the discovery of meaning and fulfillment. The narrator and Lester are therefore true representations of a person’s journey to discover their personal truth and values in life.…

    • 1464 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kamikaze

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Fight Club, directed by David Fincher and released in 1999, is a thriller with elements of action, black comedy, and social satire.…

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It may seem that the story is about the narrator because of how much he talks about himself, applying words like “I” and “my” continuously through the story however, we do not know anything about him, other than that he owns his…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk we are introduced to our narrator, a nameless male who stands atop the Parker-Morris building with a gun pressed to his mouth waiting for the moment when the bombs go off and the building crumbles. Holding the gun to his mouth is Tyler Durden who represents everything the narrator is not. The narrator is a man presumably in his 30 's, although it is never stated. He works as a recall campaign coordinator and lives in a condo furnished with the latest furniture. Tyler Durden is none of these things, Tyler Durden works various jobs and sells soap made of human fat. Tyler Durden lives in a dilapidated house with makeshift furnishings and questionable utilities. Tyler Durden is satisfied with his life, unlike our narrator who suffers from chronic insomnia and who often speaks bitterly about the corporate life.…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fight Club Essay

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Fight Club centers around an unnamed narrator who projects his unconscious identity as a separate character, Tyler Durdin. Tyler frees the narrator from his former pretenses of life regarding society through self destruction. The narrator burns his house, quits his job, and beings to live recklessly, seemingly by coincidence. He subconsciously rids himself of all worldly possessions. Together, Tyler and the narrator form Fight Club - an underground group…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fight Club Setting

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages

    From the dawn of time, people have always had a deep and violent nature hidden within their roots. Although this kind of trait is suppressed and often strongly frowned upon, under the correct conditions, it is revealed to have a powerful effect, showing positive results. Conversely, throughout its true, vigorous and highly controversial content, the series Fight Club is a factual establishment. Which has such an effect, to bring out the fierce personality from almost anyone. The strings of the Film and book are based upon the story of a “ticking-time bomb insomniac… a slippery soap salesman…channeling primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy” (Chuck Palahniuk). Through the means of the characters and elements…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Heart of Darkness: Cruelty

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages

    as a narrator so he himself can enter the story and tell it out of his own…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    DORIAN GRAY SCRIPT

    • 1950 Words
    • 5 Pages

    A- In a nutshell, the narrator, a schizophrenic insomniac who is addicted to support groups, which is where he came encounter with Marla, meets Tyler Durden on a plane ride. Tyler is everything the narrator wants to be. Handsome, smart, clever, confident, and more importantly he is an independent to everyone around him.…

    • 1950 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    When Tyler disappears for a while, the narrator is left at home with an ever increasing band of Mayhem members who watch television and laugh at their publicized acts of vandalism. When Bob, a member after being introduced to Fight Club, is killed during a botched sabotage operation, the narrator seeks to disband the group before things get out of control.…

    • 2627 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Not very often does a profound, life-altering figure surface via literature. However, Fight Club, a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, ushered in one of the most revolutionarily minded characters literature has even seen. The story is set in an urban, United States city and suburb. The name of the city is never revealed, nor is it of any importance. The purpose of the setting is solely to give the reader the sense that this could happen anywhere is America. The book tells the story of a man dealing with his unhappiness with his own life, how he copes with it, and how he corrects the corporate tyranny plaguing the lives of every citizen in the county. In addition, the story consists of several characters, such as the narrator, Marla Singer, and Robert Paulson. But, even though the story is mainly told from the narrator's perspective, it is Tyler Durden, the narrator's alter ego, that steals the show. Tyler Durden is everything one should aspire to be. He is handsome, intelligent, decisive, and lives entirely without fear. He is dynamic in every realm of thinking, for the layers of his character run deeper than the mind can at first perceive. Tyler Durden is many things, but above all, he is a powerful, influential leader, he is spiritual, and most importantly, he is free.…

    • 1089 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays