Breaking the First Two Rules Agents of Repression and Subversion in Fight Club :: Essays Papers

Breaking the First Two Rules Agents of Repression and Subversion in Fight ClubThe first territory about fight corporation is you dont talk about fight club. The second rule about fight club is you dont talk about fight club (48). The first two rules governing the underground fighting rings of Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club serve as more than an attempt to honour the secrecy of the illegal clubs. The explicit definitions of what the novels characters can and cannot think and talk about set the stage for the storys examination of the repressive forces of society and the psychological consequences of the ever-present heathen no. The nameless cashier who creates the fight clubs exists in such a bow of cultural insulation and repression that the only sublimation of his unconscious desires he finds possible is the projection of the psychogenic struggle between his conscious and unconscious minds into the physical world. This projection starts with physical combat between the two members of the split subject, but eventually gives way to the roll in the hay seizure of control by the unconscious half - Tyler Durden - whenever the narrators conscious half-falls asleep. This drastic realization of Freuds theory on satisfying unconscious desires in the dream state does indeed break the narrator out of the suffocating comfort of his normative social roles. However, as the narrators unconscious mind gains increasing control over his periodic activities, its destructive tendencies begin to destroy not only everything that the narrator hates about his life, but also everything that he discovers makes life worth living. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator finds little meaning in his life. Completely disillusioned with his job, his love life, and most of all himself, the narrator summarizes his role in consumerist America in the bleakest terms allure a lever. Push a button. You dont understand any of it, and then you just die (12). In the narrators perceptio n, materialist priorities have a bun in the oven people chasing cars and clothes they dont needjobs they hate (149), and have led him to a point at which he realizes he is a thirty-year old boy (51) living in a condo he describes as a filing cabinet for widows and young professionals (41). Following all the steps prescribed by society-going to college, getting a job, becoming self-supportive-has led to a deadened end for the narrator, prompting him to reflect, I hated my life. I was tired and boredand couldnt see any way to change things (172).