Literary Analysis Essay on Fight Club: Exposing Masculinity Through Satire

Introduction

Satire is the use of exaggeration, irony, ridicule, or humor to criticize or expose people vices, or stupidity, especially in the context of contemporary issues. In the book, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, the author used satire, by mainly using exaggeration to expose the attitude of men towards masculinity. The novel indicates men are forced by society to live as consumers with their lives surrounded by physical beauty, shopping, and clothing for them to be considered mescaline. Besides, the novel also shows that such characteristics are necessarily effeminate, and since society treasure these things, it suppresses the aspects of men that make them men. In general, the novel suggests that men as so emasculated that they forget it means to be a "real man." "The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says" (Palahniuk).

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The Fighting Club in the novel arose as a reaction to the emasculated state of affair, to allow men discover their masculinity. However, according to Fight Club, what is masculinity? Going by the understanding of the members of fight clubs; masculinity or "real" man, meant the willingness to feel pain, and cause pain to others. Tyler Durden believes that masculinity is a physical state of being aware of one's body and being ready to use the body to satisfy deeply rooted aggressive desires. As a result, the fight club gives men a new sense of life that the other men lack. "After you've been to fight club, watching football on television is watching pornography when you could be having great sex" (Palahniuk).

However, as the novel approaches its conclusion, the concept of masculinity gets more complicated. Ultimately, the books suggest that unchecked raw masculinity has the potential of being more harmful than the contemporary emasculated consumerist society. For example, Tyler Durden and his crew in their "Project Mayhem" began engineering series of destructive terror, to the extent that the Narrator saw the behavior in its embrace of "primal" aspects of masculinity through violence and aggression as too harmful and destructive that it must be stopped. "Somewhere in the one hundred and ninety-one floors under us, the space monkeys in the Mischief Committee of Project Mayhem are running wild, destroying every scrap of history" (Palahniuk).

One of the evident and troubling facts that the novel depicts about masculinity is that fact the fighting club admits only men. Those members joining the club strongly believe that traditionally effeminate behaviors and values are eroding them and that even worse, women are enemies of masculinity. The Narrators wonders whether he really need a woman in his life. The author tend to ultimately share the characters explicitly and implicitly misogynistic attitudes as a result lack of alternative corrective views from characters in the book. Besides, the Narrator's feelings for Marla, a woman suggest an alternative to purity and unfiltered masculinity. In this case, being a man means hating any aspects of being feminine. This is the reason why the members of Project Mayhem and fight Club dismiss femininity and women altogether. Despite the negative attitude towards women, the Narrator, towards the end of the Novel, approaches Marla, seeking assistance while fighting Project Mayhem and Tyler. In this case, the Novel tends to suggest that the answer to the problems facing society (effeminateness) is not to hyper-masculinity or swinging back in the opposite direction but instead to embrace values that are stereotypically feminine such as compassion and those that are stereotypically masculine such as strength.

From the above discussion, it is clear that the novel presents the concept of masculinity from a satirical perspective. It defines masculinity as an act of being destructive and aggressive with the ability to endure and cause pain. Besides, masculinity is means denouncing anything feminine.

The Impact of Father Figure Relationship in the Behaviors of Characters

Fight Club is a group of men who engage in fighting as a way of demonstrating their masculinity. Both the Narrator and Durden claim to have experience strainers relationship with their fathers in childhood. This poor relationship between significant characters and their parents played a critical role in the initial development of the fighting club. In the novel, the reader gains a glimpse into the childhood life of the Narrator and the nature of the relationship between him and his parents.

At one point in the novel, Tyler says, "Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?" (Palahniuk). This is an indication that the father of the Narrator abandoned him at a certain point in his young life. Besides, the Narrator also said, "Except for their humping, Tyler and Marla were never in the same room. My parents pulled this same act for years" (Palahniuk). This utterance is an indication that he had a dysfunctional relationship with his parents on matters concerning zero communication and sex. This background provides evidence on the probable cause of the characters' destructive behavior and the development of the fight club.

In the novel, fighting is a significant event surrounding the theme of the story. After the first fight, The Narrator and Tyler, the two characters, had a conversation in the bathroom where Tyler is asked to mention the person he was fighting. In his response, Tyler said that he was fighting his father. The reply was an indication of the hostility that Tyler has towards his father, and he acknowledges that a woman-his mother raised him. Contrary to his peer's negative attitude towards women, the fact that a woman raised him to hurt him.

Tyler's love for fighting and the creation of a fight club may have been to express his internal desires to fighting his father. Various studies have shown the behavior of an individual at adulthood, and later stages in life are greatly affected by the quality of life of the person at childhood. People from facilities characterized by poor parenting and violence tend to develop a violent behavior as a compensation for lack of quality life and love from parents. The presence of a father figure who acts as a role model helps children develop healthy behavior at a later stage in life. For Tyler, however, this was not the case. Tyler lacked the love of his father, and in most cases, he associates his father with God. After the first fight, he wonders whether it is a must for a person to have a father to be successful. For him, therefore, starting the fight club was an indication that he did not need support from his father.

According to the Narrator, the relationship between him and Tyler was just a reflection of his relationship with his parents in childhood. He said that since his parents were not in good terms, he uses to pass information between them. That is precisely what is happening in the life of the Narrator, where he passes information between Tyler and Marla Singer. Looking at the relationship between the two, it is clear that Tyler has become the father figure. Tyler has taken over the responsibility that the Narrator's father should have taken.

Work Cited

Palahniuk, C. Fight Club: a novel. WW Norton & Company, 1999.