The Fight Towards Completeness

The Fight Towards Completeness

“Before the presentation, when I sat across from my boss, telling him where in the script each slide cues and when I wanted to run the video segment, my boss says, what do you get yourself into every weekend?” In Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, the first rule about fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club. The purpose of Fight club was to help this generation of men raised by women reconnect to their manhood. Even though they enjoyed being part of this club they did run it like a cult. It gave them a sense of belongingness and yet they treated it with separate identity where they did rather draw a line between who they were in real life compared to who they were in fight club, “fight club exist only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends (49).” It was a fake world they had created for themselves “who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world, who I am in fight club is not someone my boss knows (49). As Palahniuk described the graphics of the so called fight club, I crunched because to me it was more pain than one could have experienced but to them it was the kind of pain that healed, the pain to fight for.

The stigma attached to these men raised by women didn’t make them feel men enough and as a result, they were unable to connect with their manhood. They were often quick to point out to the fact that they lacked father figures in their lives. Members of this club had similar needs, they struggled internally with their identities of being men and therefore being part of fight club gave them a chance to come face to face with their fears and fight it off. The writer compared the feeling of satisfaction of fight club, to things like going to the gym, keeping your hair cut short and cutting your nails, in other words these were some of the things that makes one feel good about themselves. The writer valued going to fight club more than going to a crowded gym with guys trying to look like men. As he continuously struggled with his identity he wasn’t sure whether his searches for answers were self-improvement or maybe self-destruction (49). His brief encounter with his absent father didn’t offer any answers either. Whiles still confused at age 30, he had turned to his father for directions, but not knowing what his son needed, he pointed him towards getting married. To him another woman is not the answer to fill his void (51).

Fight club offered an opportunity for these men to confront their demons and also gave them a sense of accomplishment. However the discovery of the connection between finding their identities and self-destruction after Tyler asked to hit him, to them was a great way to be whole. They believed that the possibility of destroying some part of themselves may be the answer to their quest. According to Tyler he didn’t want to die without scars which symbolizes their readiness to battle their fears and what they had lost growing up. In the writer’s opinion he just didn’t want to die without few scars, “It’s nothing anymore to have a beautiful stock body (48).” As they continued to fight and suffer the bruises and scars, the writer’s sense of vainness began to diminish. For someone who is defined by the perishable things in life I could see a change of tone, “At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves (52).” Even though they claim nothing personal about who they physically will fight, there is everything personal about fighting their confused and split personalities. Nonetheless in search of their identities, the inner struggles grew with them; they were torn between who they are and who they want to be. At some point they felt their lives could have been much better with their fathers involved and another point they felt they probably didn’t need them as Tyler recalls “…. Maybe we didn’t need a father to complete ourselves (54).”