Andrew's Blog, Part II

     Giroux and Szeman argue that Fight Club offers no effective alternative to consumer capitalism. They refer to Project Mayhem as “a vanguardist political movement” led by Tyler Durden. But their argument becomes rather meaningless if Palahniuk’s Fight Club is analyzed deeply. The book is not trying to offer an alternative to capitalism. Palahniuk is merely demonstrating the flaws in a capitalistic society. He wishes to make a point about society, and show how a seemingly perfect system is really just as flawed as any other system of social organization. Palahniuk does not mean for Project Mayhem to be a solution to capitalism. On the contrary, his book tells of the insanity and awfulness of Project Mayhem. Project Mayhem is his way of showing what capitalism can do to an individual driven over the edge. The system caused Jack to go insane. He created Tyler because of capitalism. Before him, Jack was a capitalism poster child. He endorsed the lifestyle completely. He was absorbed in IKEA, drove a luxury car, and had nice clothes and a nice apartment. But none of this made him happy. So, he creates Tyler and eventually Tyler controls Jack, and starts to take everything too far in Jack’s opinion. Palahniuk clearly shows his objection to Project Mayhem towards the end of the novel, when Jack comes to terms with his insanity and realizes what he has done. Giroux and Szeman see Project Mayhem as an alternative to capitalism when it is merely a product of capitalism.

     Chuck Palahniuk has an effective writing style in his novel Fight Club. It’s a very different writing style than what I am used to reading, and so far I have really enjoyed it. I like that he doesn’t stick to any sort of timeline. He likes to explain the end result and then explain what lead up to that result. The story starts with the end, then jumps to the beginning, and makes several more jumps through time. It works really well because the main character is disoriented just like the writing style. He talks about waking up in various airports. How he loses hours and gains hours as he changes time zones. He also discusses the idea that he could be a different person. It makes the readers feel the disorientation that the main character feels.

     The main character is also very emotional. When Marla Singer enters the story he is very angry with her because her lie exposes his lie. His anger comes in spurts. He sees her and it causes him to get very angry. The writing style during these parts shows this very well with short sentences and fragments. This causes the readers to feel the emotion.

     Palahniuk is an excellent writer. He uses his writing style to make the reader understand the situation of the main character. By reading this book readers become confused and disoriented at first. This is Palahniuk’s goal and he achieves it well.

     Welcome to my blog. This blog is part of the course requirement for my English 1102 course at Georgia Tech. I will be using this blog to respond to articles, online journals, novels, etc. that are required reading for the class.