Essay on Masculinity in 'Fight Club'

Introduction

The novel "fight club" provides overwhelming evidence that highlights the aspect of masculinity and gender roles in the society. Over the years, gender has been a fundamental topic and has played an important role in shaping how the society operates. Both men and women are perceived in different ways across different cultures in the world. In the novel, there are heterosexual men who value material things over religious possessions and brand names over individuality. The existing castration attached to consumer values has prevented the writer from telling the truth about different issues, specifically masculinity. In seeking to change to other themes, the narrator creates Tyler Durden who is portrayed as an anarcho-primitivist and assumes the role of father to the feminized men of capitalism, the middle-men who lacks depression to fight or engage in war, only an internal struggle for meaning. This means that the contemporary society views masculinity as "Strong Man" and is attributed to physical strength, courage, and endurance. Those with such attributes include Spartan warriors and Rambo. This means that the novel validates and evaluates men based on their physical prowess and endurance.

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Lack of identity is a primary theme that dominated through the novel "Fight Club" and tries to narrate about a white and middle-class man with an identity crisis. The narrator did not use his identity and only used third person to give reference. Similarly, the narrator used his internal organs to refer to him as "Joe's Broken Heart." The two names have shown a crisis of identity, and for this reason, he is seen as a deposed male in the 20th century and the early 21st century, seeing himself in a position with no absolute meaning in a society where people are identified by their uniqueness (Material goods possessed). Through feminism tenacity and racial equality, the white heterosexual men are made answerable to the sins of their ancestors and at the same time denied access to the freedom they previously enjoyed. When Benyon proposes that "The unquestionable authority given to men has diminished, creating a sense of desperation," he induces the idea that the narrator vocalizes when discussing the internal spiritual warfare of men. The loss of dominance has been transferred to masochism (Ta 267). This means that the novel does not focus on imposing pain but rather the ability of a man to endure pain. The broad self-harming suggests that other than the oppressed groups, white men lack one specific enemy to fight. For this reason, they fight each other and ultimately together against those in power who are subjected to powerless positions.

When the novel was written, a number of interviews were conducted to assess the lives of young men. One notable incident that happened to the narrator was that the white and Christian male in America did not undergo any rite of passage, except for the material goods acquired overtime such as cars and houses, to validate their degree of masculinity. From the traditional point of view, the father would lead the son into adulthood, but the boys without fathers or father figure in their lives would become "perpetual adolescence." They lack the qualities of a man based on the traditional parameters. This kind of 'men' filled their houses with material wealth with a hope that they would express their individuality through these commodities and other forms of material wealth. In the end, however, they rather found their selves stuck in "lovely nest" and uncomfortable with the material success. An analysis of this scenario reveals that the narrator is feminized, and consumed by consumerism and tries to find identify through physical objects such as furniture.

Kimmel and Kauffman (18) discussed the recent predicament of the white masculinity and stated that "even though these men dominate everything across the globe, their aggregate power as a group do not decipher to the individual perception of being empowered. In reality, this group feels less masculine. The narrator has a sense of helplessness in his work and emotional life. He is seen as more passive and feminized leading to the creation of a character (Tyler Durden) who is an active, stronger and more aggressive man. Subsequently, Tyler is seen as a construct of a hyperactive male and an appropriate contrast to Marla who challenges masculinity by attending Remaining Men together, a cancer organization. This reveals that Fight Club has been used as a tool for encouraging young men in reclaiming their masculine birth-right. The group of men decided to take over the world with no frontiers and retained physically empowered while at the same time shunned all the violent actions. To the contemporary society, it has given young men an opportunity to show their aggressiveness and an opportunity to bond, which is different from the feminized male connection of the Remaining Men Together organization discussed in the novel. Through Fight Club, men have an opportunity to demonstrate their masculinity prowess through traditional ways.

Lack of a father figure in a child's life is an important element that has been highlighted on in Fight club. The father figure is compared to God and heroes in any person's life. In case a father manages to transmit culturally accepted types of masculinity to their sons then the son is perceived as more masculine compared to those without father figures in their lives. In the contemporary society, the role of the father has transformed and is quite often distant, perhaps literally insignificant. They were earlier seen as a soaring figure in the life of a child, and therefore their presence was very fundamental. In the novel, Tyler becomes the Hero and for that reason is the father to the groups, offering them an excellent way of showing their masculinity and engaging in "spiritual warfare"-that is the only method to express themselves. Ideally, what the novel states is true since father play a fundamental role in shaping the life of their sons, both mentally and physically.

The problem with what the novel advocates for is that the Tyler disappoints just as the father did. He runs away to different countries across the globe, setting franchise Fight Club just like the father set up other families and the storyteller in a way felt abandoned "I am Joe's Broken Heart because Tyler's dumped me. Because my father dumped me" (Palahniuk 134). Even though Tyler is seen as the embodiment of a hero, God-like figure of wisdom and strength, he ultimately reinforces similar institutions he wanted to destroy. When he wanted to create Project Mayhem, he designed a new system as the names and individuality were not important. The members at some point expressed a sense of negativity because they were perceived not to be "beautiful and unique" while still caged in a culture where they are seen as different cogs. It is only in death that the members of Project Mayhem repossessed their identity, specifically the masculinity aspect through the adoption of a paternalistic surname. Bob changed his name to Robert Paulson. The speaker states that "in death, we are heroes," but Bob's death brings a new era for the hero and sees that nihilistic masochism did not save his feminized acquaintances.

A significant grievance is how people felt abandoned by God, the father. There is an argument that they can only get attention from God after a sin is committed. This is linked to the masculinity in the myths, and Tyler feels that it is the only method of beating death-"we will be a legend. We will not grow old". These words are said since the writer is afraid to and would rather be an apostle that a martyr. In the novel, he intentionally hides the building he was in due to the fact that he used a method of explosive that had never been effective for him. He managed to destroy other structures but failed to face death. In the end, the storyteller is seen as an impractical asylum and is bordered by people who worship him as Tyler. The story then shifts to another scene so that he eliminates himself as Tyler and emblematically kills the father and his notion of masculinity by shooting himself and holding Marla to depict Adam and Eve on the face of the world they aspire to create.

Just like a man can be denied his masculinity, the speaker has discovered relief through the support organization (Remaining Men Together). Throughout, he explains that it is only in the group that he can cry. After taking years experiencing others bear their souls, he is released and taken to a room full of men who are aspiring to claim their masculinity in the society. The story has taken comfort in the phrase, "we are men" but can only show the anxiety against the many males with him in the room. In this case, Bob is seen as a representation of his dilemma, in his mission to prove to be a man in the contemporary standards. Nevertheless, his manhood is ultimately taken away (Clark 416). The worse thing is that when treated with testosterone, his body system responded and the level of estrogen increased to the point of developing "bitch tits" and this means that Bob's body betrayed him and made him feminine. He portrays a feminized man with a self-image that is tattered to the point of injecting themselves with testosterone.

Ideally, the book has addressed a specific group of people in the society and highlighted on issues like castration fear, lack of a substantial identity and conventional concepts of the father, God, and Hero among others. After the novel was published, men started to approach the author inquiring where to find a Fight Club. This is because there was a scarcity of masculinity among men. The urge to salvage male heritage in the world where gender characteristics are analyzed is a theme that still exists in the contemporary society, maintaining Fight Club's case as an essential text, for this generation to apply. The novel narrates that the contemporary society undermines men and forces that to live an entrepreneurial life that is focused on material things. It further proposes that such traits are fundamental effeminate and since the American society prizes such things it limits the aspect of men that make men, men. This means that the novel depicts men it portrays as being feminized to the point that they have forgotten what being "real man" is. The novel has emerged in this state of affair to give men the opportunity of rediscovering the raw masculinity and compare with that of the current society (King 370). But based on the theory of fight club, being masculine involves the willingness to feel and endure pain. Tyler masculinity is a physical state, an awareness of a person's body to meet the aggressive needs. Nevertheless, as the novel concludes, it makes masculinity to become more complicated. It gives a suggestion that raw, unrestricted masculinity can be as though not more harmful than a feminized and consumerist society.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as far as masculinity goes, it can be easily stated that the novel traps men into some gender roles. Not every man is violent, hostile or brainwashed but the novel has praised the fact that manhood needs to express some sense of violence and aggression towards people and corporations in the society. There is no certainty that men must be violent and that they need not to physically handle each other to prove masculinity. Critics have debated that the novel and the author eventually share the values and beliefs based on masculinity that dictates that men must be aggressive and physical, pointing to the lack of articulate alternative character views and also the absence of female character(with the exception of Marla Singer). At the same time, others claimed that the mutual feeling between the narrator and Marla offers an alternative to pure, unfiltered masculinity and for that reason a critique of cha...