Anger Expressed Through Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club"

In his piece of literature "Fight Club," Chuck Palahniuk expresses the hidden anger that is found deep within those who do not know how to express their emotions constructively. Within the literature he expresses the anger that many of us have towards society through the eyes of a man who is willing to give his life to free everyone from the guidelines, which bound society. Palahniuk expressed this anger through the characters and view points that he chose throughout his piece of literature. By using the first, second, and third person narrative he made the reader feel at times as if they were looking at the action from afar while at the same time pulling the reader into the action creating an atmosphere through the eyes of No Name. Palahniuk not only wanted the reader to experience the book from the eyes of one who is clinically insane but from the eyes of a person who can understand what No Name was experiencing.

The lessons learned during childhood are the foundational direction all humans follow in their journey of self-preservation. No Name grew up only knowing what he could figure out on his own with only his intuition to guide him. His mother had always been there to guide him in his path threw childhood into adulthood but she never taught him anything of importance that could help him learn what was and was not accepted in society. "My mother said, never buy anything with a nylon zipper. My parents never said anything you'd want to embroider on a cushion" (Palahniuk 66). "Tyler Never knew his father" (Palahniuk 49). A father figure in the household is necessary to a child's development in learning about the world that surrounds them because it gives the child a second view point to perceive the world. No Name created multiple personalities to replace the father figure that most children have so that he could deal with the embarrassment from mistakes he would make when figuring out what is, and what is not socially accepted in society. This foundation from No Names childhood created a building block for which all of the anger No Name had built upon. No Names childhood was the gasoline that fueled his rage for society, pushing him to commit crimes against humanity that any normal person would not have done.

"We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression" (Palahniuk 149). All of the years of learning the hard way what society permits and does not accept gave No Name an outsiders view of society. No Name believed that throughout history society has consistently kept human strength and power to a minimum so that those who that are made up of it shall never be able to escape from it. The criminal acts that he conducted were done through anger towards the machine that generations of people had created. Palahniuk made No Name so caught up in anger towards something of no substance that the only way for him to free everyone in society was to destroy the very rules that everyone had lived by for so long. If you take away the rules that govern the very foundation of society you are left with only but yourself to pull yourself up with. First presented by Palahniuk with the creation of fight club he shows how society would be shaped and formed without the rules of society. "What happens at fight club doesn't happen in words" (Palahniuk 51). Fight club represented the manifested anger that No Name had come to express through violence. Palahniuk gave No Name Fight Club so that he would have an arena and place to build his confidence and skills to get revenge for his childhood.

What led to the destruction No Name created was through the fear that had created his multiple personalities. Alone, No Name is nothing more then an angry soul lost in the hustle of society. But with the addition of his multiple personalities he became an extremely dangerous man because he had a different personality for every fear he might have had. Palahniuk created a supervillan who could transform into any personality or character for any type of situation. The fact that No Name can change his personality at anytime is not what makes him so dangerous but the fact that his personalities were becoming so powerful. Since his personalities were becoming so powerful they began to struggle for power and control over No Names mind and body. No Name had created his personalities out of anger towards society, himself, and his father but his personalities stopped being used as a tool for survival in society, and became another demon he had to fight off.

The most dangerous of all of the personalities was Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden was sick and tired of No Names weaknesses and tried to kill No Name to the degree where he could survive. "For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden" (Palahniuk 11). At the same time he was killing off No Name he tried getting rid of Marla. Marla and Tyler struggled over who would get No Name. Though Tyler knew that Marla existed he used the fact that she did not know their was No Name and himself to try and get the upper hand. "Marla called me at work and asked, would I skip the gym and the library or the laundry or whatever I had planned after work and come see her, instead" (Palahniuk 102). Palahniuk created this tug of war between Marla and Tyler to give No Name the extra push it need for him to go off the deep end. Without this struggle No Name would have either given into all of Tyler's plans or created a world full of chaos, or would have been sucked into the depressing journey of a life he would continue taking.

Palahniuk's message which is broadcasted throughout this piece is that the hardest part of overcoming anger is accepting it for what it is and knowing that no matter what you do, you will always feel those feelings of hate and disgust. He proved that No Name without a doubt was enraged with anger towards society, his father, and himself but he knew that the only way he could truly relieve much of the pain was through destroying his personalities allowing him to have a clearer view at what enraged him most. Palahniuk dove into the deepest and darkest corners of every persons soul to find the anger that everyone posses for the society that they live in. In a way, Palahniuk not only shows us what many of us do not like about society but the things that enrage him most.

Works Cited

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Norton & CO, 2005.