Fight Club Discussion

I also enjoyed the discussion on Fight Club in Tuesday’s class and it brought up many points that I had not thought about, for instance that the novel could be considered feminist. I read Fight Club during the summer and then again for class, and I got a totally different read the second time around. When I first read the novel, the tone seemed very pessimistic and dark; almost that the meaning of the world was lost. Then, when reading the second time, the tone seemed more sarcastic and slightly humorous about exaggerating our culture’s stereotypes, such as masculinity or commercialism. I’m still struggling to see how this novel could be considered feminine because the idea of a fight club or the character of Tyler Durden is so primitively masculine. I can connect the idea of feminine to the main character’s power animal, the penguin, because this is not a typically masculine animal but not to the concept of the fight clubs. I think women were outlawed from the fight clubs to convey this intense exaggerated feeling that men are the most constricted in their gender and need an outlet. Though I don’t necessarily agree with this view, it seemed to me that the book wanted to comment on this point of view in society; not to draw attention to women oppression. Also, the two main women found in Fight Club, Marla and Chloe, both seemed to be portrayed in a very sexual light that is contradictory to the feminist perspective. I hope that this masculine/feminine subject can be further explored when discussing the second part of the novel.