Fight Club Essay -- essays research papers

The film ‘Fight Club’ follows, to some degree of accuracy, the archetypal paradigm of the apocalyptic guidelines discussed in English 3910. Specifically the movie mostly deals with the genre of the personal apocalypse. Thus, following suit in relation to such works as ‘Lancelot’, ‘The Violent Bear it away’ and ‘Apocalypse Now’. ‘Fight Club’, essentiality contains the basic premise of these works, that is the purging of one’s identity through extreme measures and crisis; to ultimately arrive at a personal revelation in the end. Like ‘Apocalypse Now’, the audience is lead by narration to give a reflecting insight into the apocalyptic journey of young professional named Jack. Jack works a regular nine to five office job for an insurance company and suffers from insomnia. He finds his cure in attending support groups for the mortally afflicted. One of the first groups he attends is a testicular cancer group and discovers, through an exercise referred to as â€Å"pairing up† (to share brotherly emotion with your fellow mortally afflicted), that crying with and hugging these people makes him feel better. He, although he does not have testicular cancer, is spiritual impotent and this group allows him to fill that void in his life. He gets addicted to this, and begins attending different support groups everyday, his faking becomes his foma, he knows like the bokonist, that his new â€Å"religion† is lies. â€Å"I didn't say anything,† he explains as he forges a series of diseases. â€Å"They always assumed the worst.† Nonetheless, his search for tears and experiencing other people’s pain gave meaning to his identity. â€Å"Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy (‘the books of Bokonon 1:5’, Vonnegut, 1963).† Jack has no trouble weeping in these strangers’ arms until he meets another phony, Marla, a support-group â€Å"tourist† and a reflection of himself that he finds objectionable. She claims to like the emotional workout of being with these people, which is â€Å"cheaper than a movie.† However, when Marla abruptly begins to attend all the meetings he is attending. He becomes irritated by her presence because she is a fraud too and doesn’t belong in his grandfallon. Her company reminds him that he is impostor and he doesn’t like that. They workout a deal where they split the days up between them. She gets the breast cancer and emphysema group while he takes the testicu... ... side by side, looking on as the national credit building explodes in flames. With their debt they owed to the material world purged to zero, they head off in a fresh direction as the new Adam and Eve. Like Willard in ‘Apocalypse Now’, Jack’s revelation at the end of his hellish journey is left unclear and complex. In the voice of his narration, perhaps there is a conclusion: â€Å"You are not your job. You are not how much you have in the bank. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your khakis. You are not a beautiful unique snowflake. What happens when you can’t sleep? What happens then is there’s a gun in your mouth. And what happens next is you meet Tyler Durden. Let me tell you about Tyler. He had a plan. In Tyler we trusted. Tyler says self-improvement is masturbation. Tyler says-self-destruction might be the answer.† Conceivably, there is a Tyler Durden inside the soul of us all waiting to be called. â€Å"I’m simply what you needed and wanted,† Durden said the moment Jack realized they were the same person. Director of ‘Apocalypse Now’, Francis Ford Coppala said it best in an interview during the release of his movie, â€Å"I believe that the end was always about choice.†