Fight Club Essay

Pain, both emotional and physical pain, are two very important aspects of humanity which can be defined by a multitude of emotions and states of minds. Chuck Palahniuk, in his book titled Flight Club captures this notion of pain and self destruction and the existence and importance pain has in each of our lives. Everyone experiences some degree of pain in their lifetime, whether the pain we combat is emotional pain, caused by a traumatic experience in life or physical pain that is caused by self infliction or by someone else. I think a lot of people use pain as an escape mechanism; in the novel Fight Club it certainly seems like it is used as a means of escape from life but oddly enough it is also used to represent life. The complete visceral and jarring experience of having your lights punched out seems to be Fight Club’s way of offering its characters a means of escape from a pathetically pampered, pain free existence, but at the same time it is creating life for many of the characters in the book. The novel seems to consist of men who are already in a great deal of pain because of shattered dreams and the illusion they were taught to believe in by society. Project Mayhem is something that gives each of these men in the novel something to fight for and something to fight against. Many of the men who participate in fight club are already in a great deal of pain because many of them grew up without a father figure. Is it necessary though to feel pain to be able to live life? I would think that people would do everything in their nature to avoid ever feeling any real pain, but at the same time it is necessary to associate life with pain; therefore if you have never felt any real pain in life, you are probably not living life the way it is intended to be lived. I agree with this notion that it is necessary to feel pain in life to really live, but if you do not feel pain, you should not take it upon yourself and inflict pain to feel alive.

The main character in the novel, Fight Club suffers from insomnia which seems to cause him a great deal of pain. In the book he explains what it is like to have insomnia saying that, “Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy, of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you.” (Palanhniuk 11) I think anyone in this state of mind would be very miserable and would feel really empty, because they have no feelings and their life simply does not seem to have much meaning. I think it is somewhat absurd how the narrator’s doctor suggested that if he wanted to feel real pain that he should swing by the First Eucharist on a Tuesday night, that way he could see people suffering from brain parasites, degenerative bone disease, brain dysfunctions. There he would be able to see people who were just barely getting by. (Palahniuk 9) As bad as it may sound seeing other people suffer and in pain seems to help people feel better about their lives. Going to meetings was almost like an escape mechanism for the narrator. The narrator says, “Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I’d ever felt.” (Palahniuk 12) His life was so miserable and so empty that the only way he could feel good about his life was by seeing other people suffer. The only way he was able to really feel alive toward the middle of the novel was by participating in the Fight Club events and fighting with random guys who were going through just as much pain as he was.

The most absurd thing about the narrator is that he did not only go to these support group meetings to watch other people suffer in order to feel better about his life, but he mentally put himself in their position and really felt what it was that they were actually going through. The narrator enjoyed going to support group meetings and crying with the members of the group and he liked being there to comfort them and he necessitated the comfort from others as well. “I’ve been coming here every week for two years, and every week Bob wraps his arms around me, and I cry.” (Palahniuk 7) The narrator then goes on the explain crying and how it can helps us in more ways than anyone could ever imagine. He says, “Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.” (Palahniuk 7) I agree with the narrator when he says this because I think there is a lot of truth in what he speaks. It is not until we actually hit rock bottom that we come to terms with our life. Until we reach our weakest moments in life we will never truly surrender to what it good and what is right and we will never truly be happy. The narrator found a sort of joy in the meetings and they made him feel more alive than ever because he knew there were people at the meetings who could relate to him in a way and suffer with him instead of leaving him to suffer alone.

One aspect of pain that I would really like to point out is the notion that people inflict pain upon themselves to be able to feel alive. I knew several people in my high school that used pain as a means of escape but I never understood exactly why they thought cutting themselves or hurting themselves in other ways was supposed to make them feel better. The only logical explanation that I can think of is that physical pain for people who are already in this state of emotional pain is the only kind of pain that is going to allow them to actually feel something, anything, even if what they feel is painful. Pain to people who are suffering is almost like a bitter-sweet sensation that allows them to feel alive. In the novel, Fight Club the one example that I can think of that relates to this bitter-sweet sensation of pain is the part in the book where Tyler Durden burns a kiss