MEDICINE IN LITERATURE

Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

student: Alexandra Preda

coordinator: Alina
Stegrescu
CNSS, 2015
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Chuck Palahniuk is an American
novelist and freelance
journalist, who describes his
work as transgressive fiction (a
genre of literature that focuses
on characters who feel confined
by the norms and expectations
of society and who break free of
those confines in unusual or
illicit ways. Because they are
rebelling against the basic
norms of society, protagonists
of transgressive fiction may
seem mentally ill, anti-social, or
nihilistic. The genre deals
 ABOUT FIGHT CLUB

The novel attempts to make a

statement on the effects of society
norms and the system on an
individuals pursuit of happiness
through the experiences of an
unnamed protagonist struggling
with insomnia.
It follows a conflict between
damnation and redemption, the
protagonist considers himself a
slave of history and tries to change
it by chaos.
In 1999, director David Fincher
adapted the novel into a film of the
PLOT, SETTING, CHARACTERS
The narrator- an everyman, white-
collared employee, who dedicates himself
through consumerism; through the steady
acquisition of things, he attempts to cure
his anxiety and depression.
Tyler Durden- a man of action, free-
spirited, impulsive, all-in-all revolutionary
Angel Face- A very beautiful man who
joins fight club and is loyal to Project
Mayhem (based on The Cacophony Society)
Robert "Big Bob" Paulson- an
acquaintance of the narrator from a support
group for testicular cancer, whose death
causes the narrator to turn against Tyler
because the members of Project Mayhem
treat it as a trivial matter instead of a
tragedy.
Marla Singer- A woman whom the
MEDICINE IN FIGHT CLUB(I)

This is a dream. Tyler is a projection. He's a

dissociative personality disorder. A psychogenic
fugue state. Tyler Durden is my
hallucination.(Chapter 19)

The narrators alter ego, Tyler, represents the

result of the intensity of the psychological damage
that is caused by such a materialistic culture. Tyler
creates a randomly gathered network of free
spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond
the pale of mainstream society, which is the
narrators inward urge to break free from the
system put into action.
MEDICINE IN FIGHT CLUB(II)

The first time I met Tyler, I was asleep. I was tired

and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a
plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people
dying of cancer*. I hated my life. I was tired and
bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn't
see any way to change things. Only end them.
I felt trapped.
I was too complete.
I was too perfect.

A stronger, more confidant personality will

oftentimes take over for the benefit of the individual.
Ill bring
*-others us through
medical referencesthis. As always.
are made in Chloes Ill carry
case, where you
is
kicking
shown theand screaming
suffering and
of a cancer in till
patient the hisend youll thank
reconciliation with
death
me, Tyler told the narrator.
CONCLUSION
In Fight club the disease is presented
as an attempt of redemption of the
characters inner self. Tyler acts as the
major catalyst behind the destruction of
our vanities, which he claims is the path
to finding our inner selves. "I'm
breaking my attachment to physical
power and possessions," Tyler
whispered, "because only through
destroying myself can I discover the
greater power of my spirit."