Theme

     Theme. Such an abstract word. Every story has one, some more meaningful than others yet it's always there. In Mario, it's that love compels people to fight for others. In Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream", it's that no person should be treated differently because of his/her physical traits. In Fight Club, it's that material possessions are not important. In the beginning of the story after the Narrator meets Tyler Durden, he returns to his home on the 8th floor of a condominium. He used to spend all his earnings from his lousy day job as a car company accountant on luxurious furniture for his home. It's just a shame that when he arrived outside the condo, firetrucks were franticly trying to quench the flames of a massive wildfire eupting from his bedroom windows. All the thousands of dollars he had pumped into his stylish home, and for what? The beautiful, shiny wooden floor and the yin-yang styled coffee table, gone. His 60 inch flatscreen, gone. His bathtub with built-in jets for soothing bubble baths, gone. Everything he had cared about, gone. So now what did he have? Well, he had Tyler. Neither of them were able to afford a house, so stealing an ancient, moldy one on the side of the highway was their only option. Going from "riches" to rags was a big eye-opener for the Narrator.

The Narrator's condo, furnished with shag carpet and a yin-yang coffee table.

     One of the most memorable and impacting quotes in my opinion is "Losing all hope was freedom" (Palahniuk 288). I believe he is referring to losing the hope of life ever getting better, allowed him to become "free" and do whatever he wanted to do instead of what society told him he should do. It didn't matter anymore that he didn't have the fancy car or the sweet Caddy because now he had the Fight Club, something that he created himself. It was something he was proud of that couldn't be torched by a flame, and it was all that mattered.

The Narrator realizes his condo has been destroyed.

Text Analysis

     My book, Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk uses all kinds of terrifyingly negative diction. It is a twisted book with loads of descriptive scenes to send shivers up your spine. At one point in the book where the Narrator is filled with rage up to his earlobes, he unloads his strength and vigor onto another member of the club. More brutal than Mike Tyson in the ring, he narrates, "I couldn't hear. Beautiful silence. My arms were unrelentlessly beating out his shattered skull." (Palahniuk 138). This quote demonstrates the author's voice and the tone of the novel. The tone is very dark and sinister as easily seen from the quote. The author's voice is very unique because just about every single book I have ever read is never this dark. He uses an alliteration in the phrase "shattered skull" because it sounds much more evil and horrifying than "broken head" or something similar, and is much easier to read. Lots of telegraphic sentences are used to quicken the pace of the book. Palahniuk wants you to dart your pupils across the page rapidly because that is what the action and intensity is like.

Mike Tyson after he ferociously bit his opponent's ear off.

Sounds Like Someone Needs an Attitude Adjustment

The ending song to Portal 2 is called "Want You Gone" and was written by Jonathan Coulton. I really like that game; it's one of my favorites. The song is told from the perspective of GLaDOS who is a snarky little robot girl. She tried to trick and kill Chell with a cake in the first game, but little did she know she was one of those intellectuals and she used her brain power to escape. Why should you care? It's a great game series as I've already told you. But another reason that I am writing about it is because it popped into my mind while I was reading Fight Club. Both of GLaDOS and Tyler Durden's attitudes in these stories share a similar bitterness.

Tyler Durden is the coolest guy in town, not giving a hoot. He's got the bad, fierce attitude and does only the manliest of the manliest stuff.

And he is fed up with society.

He believes the world is extremely materialistic and society has been ruined. After seeing a Calvin Kleine poster pinned to the inside of a bus, he asks the narrator, "Is that really how men are supposed to look?" (Palahniuk 32). His attitude can be shown in these words that spilled from his face: "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your dang khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world," (Palahniuk 51). He's basically saying that big corporations and the media have told everyone how to live, what to look like, and what to buy. This attitude that he has turns into a huge scheme to get revenge on these corporations later in the book. Let's relate this to Portal 2. Here are the full lyrics by the way.

Tyler Durden

GLaDOS is a bitter dragon, as shown when she spits some fire in the ending song, "Remember when you tried to kill me twice?" and "Oh how we laughed and laughed. Except I wasn't laughing." and "She was a lot like you (Maybe not quite as heavy.)" and "One day they woke me up. So I could live forever. It's such a shame the same will never happen to you." These are just a few of the immense amount of examples that I quickly copied and pasted. You can tell that she has some bitterness in her voice when she speaks about the main character Chell. The same is true from the perspective of Tyler Durden. He has a place in his little heart for hatred, revenge, murder. I think I can foresee some future events spiraling out of control later in the plot.

Syntax

     Chuck Palahniuk uses obese syntax in his book Fight Club. How does he convey such syntactical structures? He will sometimes use long, winding, descriptive, endless paragraphs that flow very well. Then, all of a sudden he will stop and create a new line with just 2 or 3 words. This very clever syntactical strategy or structure is used and displayed and executed perfectly. Never before have I seen such beautiful sentences construed together to make meanings I couldn't dream of. The long winding paragraphs have long sentence structures and sometimes use asyndeton which rids the paper of conjunctions and other useless fillers. The reader can sweep their eyes across the page with alarming speed, which is just what Chuck wanted. The sudden stops are also meticulously crafted because they create enormous emphasis and bring out these words. A reader will most likely read these words more carefully, knowing they are important. It is a good idea to use this syntactical technique because it can lead to very powerful writing and sexy voice, however only if executed in a correct fashion.

Strong Beginning

     The most important line of the first chapter of Fight Club is: "Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die." This is also the first sentence of the book, which emphasizes it quite a bit more and makes it more memorable. Right off the bat, Palahniuk shocks the reader with this impacting line to showcase Tyler's personality. He is evil. Well, he turns evil because at the beginning of the narrator's story, he explains that they were best friends. This really engaged me from the beginning. I couldn't shake it from my mind because it kind of gave me chills. The author reaches out from the book and slaps the reader across the face, which really grabs their attention. I think this is a very strong and powerful beginning that I don't find in most books. Hopefully there will be more of these WOAH moments throughout the book to make it a very enjoyable read.

Character Symbols

     Tyler Durden, one of the main characters from Fight Club is very similar to a cruise boat. This symbolizes him because a cruise boat is very tall and powerful. Tyler is very sturdy and able to "stay afloat." By this I mean that he is able to make ends meet. He is very powerful because he, along with the narrator started a club where members fight until they bleed. And then they fight some more. He is the leader of the club and everyone respects him to the point where they will do what he tells them to. Cruise boats are very sturdy and stay afloat, unless you count the Titanic. And all those other shipwrecks and stuff.

     A symbol for the mainest of the characters, the narrator, is Squidward. He is bored with life. He is apathetic about everything. And he has insomnia. Squidward is very dull, always speaking in a monotone voice. He hates his job and just about everything else. Except his weird obsession with his clarinet. You could also say he gets very little sleep because Spongebob is always causing a ruckus that keeps him up late at night.

Chuck Palahniuk

     Chuck Palahniuk (paula-nick) is the author of the book I am currently reading, Fight Club. He is a very famous author who has written 19 novels. Some of his more popular books are Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Choke. However, definitely the most commonly known is Fight Club.

     He was born February 21st, 1962, making him 52 years old at the time of writing this. He lived in a mobile home in Burbank, Washington until he was 14 and his parents divorced. This caused him to live with his mother's parents on their ranch. When Chuck's father was 3 years old, his father shot and killed his wife over the cost of a sewing machine while he hid under a bed. Then, he saw his father turn the gun on himself, all at such a young age. What an awful, horrible, tragic event. Palahniuk began writing for fun while in grade school, and in highschool was awarded "Most Wittiest". He graduated school at the University of Oregon with a bachelor's degree in journalism. For a while, he lived a normal life, until he began writing fiction in his thirties. He had his big break when he wrote Fight Club. After a few years, a movie was produced starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. This book and movie have achieved a 'cult following' and has won an many awards.

   
     His writing style is very dark in almost all of his books. Maybe that had to do with his bad childhood, or maybe not. Either way I really enjoy his writing so far in Fight Club and will probably try reading Survivor after I finish. He also has his own website if you would like to take a peek at that, here it is.