Fight Club By Chuck Palahniuk - 1442 Words

Fight Club At first glance, Chuck Palahniuk’s award-winning novel Fight Club gives the impression that it is a simple story revolving around a man who struggles to manage his insomnia. However, a deeper literary analysis will show readers that the novel is much more than that. Fight Club is actually a cleverly written novel that contains many elements of Marxist and psychoanalytic theories throughout the storyline. Marxism is based on the concepts of Karl Marx’s theories that focuses on class relations and social conflict. On the other hand, psychoanalytic criticism stems from Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology. The novel is best interpreted from a Marxist point of view because Palahniuk uses Fight Club as a means of expressing his†¦show more content†¦His economic ideas and principles contributed to the establishment of many communist states. Marxists refer to socioeconomic class when discussing the class structure because economic power always incl udes social and political power as well (Tyson 50). There are two distinct social classes featured in Fight Club that constantly clash with one another: bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie consists of powerful, wealthy individuals who are well above the proletariat. These are the people who â€Å"control the world’s natural, economic, and human resources† (Tyson 50). On the other hand, the proletariat is made up of weaker individuals but hold a much larger amount. Even though they lack power, the proletariat make up for it in numbers. They are the â€Å"majority of the global population who live in substandard conditions and who have always performed manual labor† (Tyson 50). Although not obviously mentioned, the proletariat is the ultimate source of bourgeoisie power as their labor allows the entire system to function. Without the proletariat, the bourgeoisie would cease to exist. The struggle to survive has kept the proletariat from fighting back. Fight Club does an excellent job at revealing many examples of social conflicts between the two classes. The whole basis of the story is centered on attempts to overthrow the upper class. In the scene where the