English Blog

Even though I haven’t gotten too deep into it, I am really enjoying reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I have already watched Fight Club the movie and though this makes some event less suspenseful and surprising, it allows me to pick up on the subtle hints the author left that foreshadowed the ending. The story begins with Tyler holding a gun in the unnamed narrator's mouth, while they stand on top of the one hundred and the ninety story Parker-Morris building. Meanwhile, on the floors below them, members of the Mischief Committee of Project Mayhem are dismantling the corporate offices and throwing office furniture out the windows. The narrator then tells us all the ways to make explosives, and counts down the minutes until the building goes down in flames. The story then switches to the narrator describing his life as well as Tyler’s. He describes Tyler with great detail, such as the places he works for night jobs and the various sabotages he does, like splicing movies with pornographic pictures. However, the true nature of their relationship is still unclear. The narrator also describes himself working for a car company, organizing product recalls on defective models. He is struggling in his everyday life. Trying to find a purpose for it or even some sort of comfort for he is all alone. This dissatisfaction, combined with his frequent business trips across multiple time zones, disturbs him to the point that he suffers from chronic insomnia. At the recommendation of his physician, the narrator goes to a support group for men with testicular cancer to "see what real suffering is like." After finding that crying at these support groups and listening to emotional outpourings from the suffering allows him to sleep at night, he becomes dependent on them. Although he does not really suffer from any of the sicknesses that the other attendants have, he is never caught being a "tourist" until he meets Marla Singer, a woman who also attends support groups. Her presence reflects the narrator's "tourism," and only reminds him that he doesn't belong at the support groups. He begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and therefore from sleeping. After a short confrontation, they begin going to separate support groups in order to avoid meeting again.

Thus far, the story has been quite interesting. It immediately began with the narrator’s life in jeopardy and all this chaos going on around him. Then, it takes you away from the action to build more suspense. However, it does get a little boring later with him over describing some things, such as how a film projector works, which seem quite irrelevant to the story. This story is also told in a first person point of view, which really enhances our understanding of the narrator. By telling the story in first person the author shows us how an insomniac’s mind works. With the narrator always saying “I woke up in…” to demonstrate that because of this insomnia the narrator’s mind is a drift and has theses streams of consciousness. I found this to be really helpful because it only highlighted the distress and struggles of the narrator.

With all that said, I have really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more.