Fight Club's Relationship with Our Fathers and God

Essay by jakke73University, Bachelor'sA, November 2006

download word file, 6 pages 5.0

There are many important and timely messages interwoven and clumped into the story by author Chuck Palahniuk. We will focus on two parallel themes, which run through both works. The first is a man's relationship, or non-relationship, to his father. And the second is drawn from that: our relationship with God is like our relationship to our fathers.

Chuck Palahniuk never would have dreamed his debut novel would become a landmark feature film. His first attempt to get published was with Invisible Monsters. Publishers liked it, but thought it would be too dark, too seditious for the readers. How did Palahniuk respond to this concern? He got frustrated. And he wrote something even blacker and darker and more stirring. In an interview with Chris Switzer of turtleneck.net, Palahniuk explained what he was thinking: "'What if I make it even more offensive, and more dark, and more risky? They'll never publish it.'

I had really given up hope. I was never going to get published so I might as well write what I want to write. That's when I wrote Fight Club" (Switzer).

His honesty and creativity paid off. The issues in the novel, coupled with a delicious writing style, were too good to pass up. "Fight Club" was published, and somebody at Twentieth Century Fox got their hands on it. It was a hard sell--not exactly a crowd-pleaser, executives thought. It was uncomfortable and hazardous and incendiary... and compelling.

Palahniuk's novel comments on the fact that the father is an endangered species, and we, especially males in today's society, are suffering the consequences of this. Both of the main characters, or the main character's alter-egos, Jack and Tyler, felt bitterness towards their fathers. "Tyler never knew his father [. . .]. Me, I knew my dad for about six...