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Federico Crivelli

Prof. Carlander

ENG 111

7 May 2015

Greek Tragedy Never Ends!

They say history repeats itself. Nothing is more fundamentally true than that. Often times,

the answers to present and future matters can be found in past— and thus already solved— issues.

In other words, when it comes to making a decision, the best solution is the one that has

consistently proved to be valid throughout the years. This observation adapts to every subject

matter that can be taken into consideration. Particularly, the historical roots of theater in ancient

Greece have profoundly influenced the world of cinema today. It’s not without good reason that

Hollywood movies constantly borrow elements from Greek tragedies, which have been proven

throughout the years as a successful form of entertainment, attracting an increasingly large public.

One single amphitheater in ancient Athens could accommodate up to 17,000 spectators, and today,

following the same dramatic structure characterized by the use of plot twists, violence, fallible

characters, and dramatic irony, Hollywood movies reach millions of views all around the world. A

Hollywood masterpiece from 1999, Fight Club greatly demonstrates how almost two and a half

thousand years after Sophocles, successful modern cinema still employs the same elements typical

of Greek dramas to entertain massive audiences.

The first element typical of Greek tragedies that is immediately recognizable in the movie

Fight Club is the characterization of the protagonist as a Tragic Hero. Contrary to many Greek

plays, in which the hero belongs to a high social class, in Fight Club the protagonist is a middle-
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class worker who is profoundly unsatisfied with his life. He doesn’t like his job, he hates his boss,

and he is upset by the rotten organization of society, where corporate America concentrates all the

power in the hands of a few. As he explains through direct narration, “I'd flip through catalogues

and wonder what kind of dining set defined me as a person” (Fight Club). These words are

representative of the hero’s weak disposition, and demonstrate that he is a fallible character and a

Tragic Hero. To reinforce the notion that this character is marked by a tragic flaw, he is left

unnamed in the movie, although he is marked as “Jack” on the script (Uhls). His Hamartia is

insomnia, which makes him numb and doesn’t let him see a purpose in his life. As he explains,

“with insomnia nothing is real; everything is far away… everything is a copy, of a copy, of a

copy…” (Fight Club). With these words, Edward Norton, who plays the role of the hero, describes

his state of mind of constant unhappiness, which will eventually drive him insane. This evident

flaw is what induces the protagonist to take action in the first place, which sets the story in motion

and virtually starts a countdown to his own downfall.

The inevitability of the hero’s fall from power is another element that comes straight from

Greek plays. Fight Club begins with Jack sitting down on a chair, with a pistol in his mouth, held

by another character, Tyler Durden, who says: “this is it, ground zero. Would you like to say a few

words to mark the occasion?” (Fight Club). This scene actually is the end of the story of the

movie. However, the film editor decided to place it at the beginning, and then go back in time to

reconstruct all of the events that led to that particular final scene. This important decision makes

all the difference, because it gives to the audience a prediction about how the movie will end.

Through this clever device, the film is charged with dramatic irony, whereas the public is fully

aware that every decision the hero makes in the movie and every action he takes are only leading
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him to his own downfall, where he is a few minutes to the end. Not only that: in fact, the narrator

clearly states what is going to happen:

We have front-row seats for this Theater of Mass Destruction. The Demolitions

Committee of Project Mayhem wrapped the foundation columns of a dozen

buildings with blasting gelatin. In two minutes, primary charges will blow base

charges, and a few squared blocks will be reduced to smoldering rubble. I know

this… because Tyler knows this. (Fight Club).

This revelation from the narrator serves as a prophecy in the film, another element taken from

Greek tragedy. As soon as the flash-forward ends and we are taken back in time to the beginning

of the plot, the audience knows that no matter what happens for two hours of screen play, at the

end those buildings will blow up because of a project in which our hero is evidently involved.

Also, the fact that the narrator knows about the project because Tyler knows, is a suggestion that

the two characters may be closer than one can expect.

After this foreshadow and before Edward Norton’s character meets Tyler Durden on a plane, a

closer look to the movie reveals that the character of Tyler was inserted in two separate frames. A

frame is a small fraction of a second, therefore the viewer often doesn’t realize that he’s seen it,

although he actually did. This technique is used to introduce the character of Tyler, who is a

reflection of the narrator’s imagination. Tyler is a hallucination, projected by the protagonist’s

unstable mind as a result of the insanity caused by insomnia and a dull life. As Tyler explains to a

mind-blown Jack toward the end of the last act, “You were looking for a way to change your life.

You could not do this on your own… All the ways you wish you could be: that’s me. […] I am

smart, capable, and most importantly: I am free in all the ways that you are not” (Fight Club). With
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these words we understand Tyler and the narrator really are the same person, with Tyler being the

personification of Jack’s Hubris; his overwhelming overconfidence simply cannot find place in a

morally demolished individual as the narrator, and therefore it takes the form of a whole new

person, the “free and cool” version of himself. It was not by chance that this role was assigned to

Brad Pitt, with the reputation of one of the most attractive actors on Earth. Tyler keeps explaining

to the narrator and the audience that while Jack thought he was asleep, in reality Tyler had control

of his body, but Jack imagined to assist to Tyler’s actions as a separate entity, a spectator. Pitt’s

revealing declaration to the protagonist culminates: “Little by little you are just letting yourself

become Tyler Durden” (Fight Club). As we can see, the hero’s Hamartia— his insomnia— has

brought him to insanity, leading him to live a separate life without even realizing so.

The revelation of the protagonist’s true identity, a mentally ill criminal who throughout the

movie assigns the responsibility of the events to another, imaginary character, is a clear example of

Recognition, what the Greeks called Anagnorisis. While the narrator thought himself asleep, Tyler

had created a secret army, becoming the leader of a criminal organization, Project Mayhem, with

the objective of destroying credit card companies debt records, in order to fight corporate America

and let everyone restart from zero. As the New York Times film critic Janet Maslin observed, “this

film twists and turns in ways that only add up fully on the way out of the theater and might just

require another viewing” (Maslin 2). Clearly, the plot twists described by Maslin and exemplified

by Tyler’s recognition is another element of Greek plays. As a matter of fact, although this intricate

and surreal conception might at first discourage the audience, as English professor and Tragedy

expert Clifford Leech has observed this “is what tragedy ultimately is about: the realization of the

unthinkable” (Kennedy 708). In line with the illustration of Greek Tragedy offered by X.J.
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Kennedy’s manual, this moment of recognition in the movie makes the main character awfully

aware of his responsibility in his own loss of status. At this point, it becomes apparent that by

unconsciously being Tyler more and more often, the protagonist’s actions lead him to unexpected

consequences. In fact, when he began attending support groups, Jack’s scope was just to find

comfort in his life by other people’s pain, so he could cry, and as a result of this emotion he could

finally feel alive, which in turn would let him sleep at night. However, after another impostor

spoiled the meetings for him, Jack discovers an even stronger feeling and more intense love for

life in being severely beaten up, which is the reason why he starts a fight club in the first place.

However, just like in every Greek tragedy, the normal course of action derails toward what

Aristotle defined as peripeteia— or reversal: “an action that turns out to have the opposite effect

from the one its doer had intended” (Kennedy, 708-709). In this case, the situation gradually slips

out of control as our hero gradually lets himself be governed by his hubris Tyler Durden. The

unexpected consequence is that the Fight Club slowly turns into an underground organization to

blow up half the city, compromising our view of the character, who loses the audience’s respect

and esteem.

Not all hope is lost however, because there is one more Greek tragedy element yet to be

discussed. Purgation, also known as Katharsis, is the moment where the protagonist has a chance

to partially regain the audience’s esteem by acting under a fair moral code. This will make the

audience take pleasure from the “rightness” of what they witness. As soon as the tragic hero

realizes he is a dangerous criminal, he first tries to protect Marla, with whom he had had a

complex— mostly sexual— relation, and then attempts to punish himself for his misdeeds by

denouncing his activity to the police and asking to be imprisoned. At this time, however, he finds
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out even the police officers are part of Project Mayhem, and they are going to cut his testicles off

as a punishment from betraying the Team. The tragic irony of this detail is that this form of

punishment had been decided and established by the hero himself, just like Oedipus the King had

put out a ban, just to find out he was the deserter himself. Fortunately for the narrator, he is able to

escape intact from the police officers, but at the end of the movie— what we could call Exodos

referring to Greek dramatic structure— the prophecy must realize. The protagonist, who was

pointing a gun to himself in the first scene of the movie through the hand of his personified pride

Tyler, punishes himself by shooting from under his chin through the cheek, an action that kills

Tyler but miraculously leaves him alive. Free from Tyler’s insane control of his mind, the hero is

now able to reason, which prevents him from harming Marla, whom Tyler’s Project members

kidnapped and brought to him. The movie ends with Marla and the protagonist holding hands in

front of the spectacular collapse of the credit card companies buildings, which together with

triumphant music in the background reminds the audience that they are watching a Hollywood

movie.

Although both technology and people’s cultural values have evolved throughout thousands of

years, modern entertainment is not much different from Sophocles’ theatrical plays around the fifth

century B.C. It is indeed very interesting to notice how similar the structure and the elements of

contemporary movies are to the ones established by Greek tragedy. As a matter of fact, people still

enjoy the same essentials when it comes to entertainment, and really to infinite other subject fields.

Therefore, a question becomes particularly interesting: how different would our lives be today if

we didn't find any artifacts from ancient history?


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Works Cited

Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Carter. 20th Century Fox,

1999. DVD.

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "The Theater of Sophocles." Backpack Literature: An

Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 4th ed. Pearson, 704-52. Print.

Maslin, Janet. "Fight Club (1999) FILM REVIEW; Such a Very Long Way From Duvets to

Danger." The New York Times. New York Times Reviews, 15 Oct. 1999. Web. 2 May 2015.

Uhls, Jim. "Fight Club Script." IMSDb. The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb), 16 Feb.

1998. Web. 02 May 2015.