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 parliamentary procedureThe first rule virtually fight club is you dont jaw about fight club. The second rule about fight club is you dont talk about fight club (48). The first two rules governing the impedance fighting rings of Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club give ear as more than an attempt to maintain the secrecy of the illegal clubs. The perspicuous definitions of what the novels characters can and cannot think and talk about set the stage for the storys inquiry of the repressive forces of society and the psychological consequences of the ever-present cultural no. The nameless bank clerk who creates the fight clubs exists in such a state of cultural insulation and repression that the precisely sublimation of his unconscious desires he finds possible is the projection of the mental defend between his conscious and unconscious minds into the physical world. This projection starts with physical ar med combat between the two members of the split subject, but eventually gives way to the make out seizure of realize 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 fantasy state does indeed break the narrator out of the suffocating foster of his normative social roles. However, as the narrators unconscious mind gains increasing control over his daily 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. alone disillusioned with his job, his love life, and most of all himself, the narrator summarizes his role in consumerist America in the bleakest terms Pull a lever. Push a button. You dont understand any of it, and then you just die (12). In the narra tors perception, materialist priorities break 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 official by society-going to college, getting a job, becoming self-supportive-has led to a defunct end for the narrator, prompting him to reflect, I hated my life. I was tired and boreand couldnt see any way to change things (172).