Fight Club Concepts 101

Masculinity and Gender Fight Club is meant to challenge our ideas and expectations about
gender roles, specifically what it means to be a man. Looking to the beginning of the story, the
narrator and Bob highlight what Palahniuk sees the modern American male has become. Trying
to fulfill an image and role determined by women they have lost what makes them classically
male being active, dominant, determiners of their own lives. Thus, the Remaining Men
Together testicular cancer group is the perfect place for them, and why Marla is more of a
masculine figure than either of them.
Tylers appearance and his acceptance by the narrator is the attempt to regain what they think
theyve lost. Fight club is intended as a means of regaining their masculinity, though whether it
is a path to actual masculinity or just another false-image (like Bobs body building) is a choice
you need to make. Likewise, Project Mayhem is just a larger continuation of that idea.
Fascism Fight Club is often criticized in scholarly circles (smart people talking about books) as
being a thinly veiled glorification of fascism (historys most famous fascist isHitler). With his
rules for fight club and Project Mayhem, Tyler creates a culture where men do whatever theyre
told without thinking, where their own worth and purpose is determined by only him. You guys
dont like it when youre told to take your headphones off in class, yet these guys love being told
to do everything. Is Palahniuk being fair or realistic?
Materialism/Consumer culture/Capitalism Hopefully youve caught on, but this book is an
assault on our buy everything society. Witness the narrator describing his apartment and then
having it get blown up. Youre not your job. Youre not how much money you have in the bank.
Youre not the car you drive. Youre not the contents of your wallet. Youre not your fucking
khakis. Youre the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
The soap production is also part of this. Capitalism is basically the idea that we get what we
deserve, that we should exist in a form of economic Darwinism, where if you can take advantage

of someone to get ahead, you should. The way Tyler makes soap is a version of capitalism he is
using others to profit however unlike our normal brand of American capitalism, where the rich
expend the poor like they are just another expendable line item, Tyler is using the rich. Its an
ugly and effective satire of the system.
People = product
Popular culture Ties into the previous note, but Fight Club goes after popular culture
celebrities, fads, styles, etc. and points out their problems. As Tyler says: We are the

byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things dont concern me.
What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guys name
on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, OlestraFuck Martha Stewart. Marthas polishing the
brass on the Titanic. Its all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and strine
green stripe patterns.
Psychology/Freud/Oedipal Complex/Ego/Id/Super ego While not an exact reproduction
(mainly because Freudian psychology has been surpassed by newer, more scientific psychology)
Fight Club can be seen as a Freudian experiment: What happens when the id and ego enter open
conflict? Palahniuk opens this by creating a character whose experience of the Oedipal Complex
was less than complete (the OP is meant to complete the Freudian psychological triangle of
id/ego/super ego). The rest of the novel can be seen as an experiment, with the open invitation
at the end to make your own call as to what has happened by the end.
Control/History/Tradition From the beginning of the novel with Tyler announcing how they
will live forever as they destroy the National History museum, Fight Club goes after the current
(traditional) system of power attempting to seize power from the rich and place it in the hands
of the workers.
[Its worth noting that this idea is relatively close to the original, uncorrupted idea of Communism
(in which the working class would take power and control from their bosses, and power would be

given to those who actually do things as opposed to those who TELL others to do things), though
just like communism what actually occurs is more of a dictatorship.]
The purpose of fight club and Project Mayhem, amongst other ideas, is then to have men take
back control theyve willingly given to others. To do Tyler has to break them of years of
indoctrination, hence the various assignments from Project Mayhem.