Fight Club Through Marx And Freud Lenses

Alejo Hernan-Iturriza
Professor Matt Fallon
05/04/12
ENGW 300

Fight Club through Marx and Freud Lenses

“The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club”. These words come from the mouth of Tyler Durden in the exquisite novel Fight Club written by Chuck Palahniuk. It is like the protagonist, who suffers from split personalitydisorder, would not want to talk about this self-destructive disorder that helps him feel alive. This novel, due to the complexity of its plot and characters, can be entirely analyzed through relevant theories. Karl Marx was a Prussian philosopher and economist who spent most of his work studying Capitalism and its potential failure, which at the time was already strong in Europe during theindustrial revolution. Sigmund Freud was a neurologist from the Austrian Empire, who is considered the father of the psychoanalysis, and one of the greatest intellectual figures of the twentieth century. There are many elements in Fight Club that can be analyzed through the lens of Marx and Freud, and their respective theories.
If we analyze Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk through Karl’s Marx lenses,we can find elements related between the main characters and the socioeconomic principles provided by this German philosopher. From the very beginning in chapter one, it is clear that the author’s intention is to disclose details about the protagonist in reference with his social class. The first sentence of the book on page 11 says: “Tyler Gets me a job as a waiter”, which is a very decent job,but according to society is not considered a career and is also not well positioned on the social scale. However, the main character does not seem to mind, since he moves very easily within the social strata as something natural that just happens. For example, for him is quite the same to have a good well paid job which allows him to travel to different cities, to have a job as a waiter in a hotelserving rich people. This is reflected on page 31 when he says: “What I am is a recall campaign coordinator, I tell the single-serving friend next to me, but I’m working toward a career as a dishwasher”. His intention with this last phrase is to make fun in a sarcastic way of Classism, which “is an ideology that equates one’s value as a human being with the social class to which one belongs”(Tyson,55). It’s not usual that a well positioned person is looking for a career as a dishwasher. It’s also striking how he explains undeterred his change of living in a nice apartment that he describes on page 41 as “home was a condominium on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise, a sort of filing cabinet for widows and Young professionals”, to move into a house almost abandoned in a desolated area, hestates on page 64 “you give up all your worldly possessions and your car and go live in a rented house in the toxic waste part of the town…”. Having said that, it is complicated to locate the protagonist, which never reveals his name, within the five socioeconomic groups: “Underclass, lower class, middle class, upper class, and aristocracy” (Tyson, 52). In his Communist Manifesto Marx explains itthis way: “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.”
Another point of convergence among Marx and Fight Club is the Consumerism, which “is an ideology thatsays I’m only as good as what I buy” (Tyson, 56). There is a dialogue between the protagonist and a doorman on page 45 in which the last one exclaims: “A lot of young people try to impress the world and buy too many things,” placing in an indirectly way the main character in this segment of consumerists. Also, the protagonist on page 43 talks about different brands of furniture and other objects...