Instructions: For our class, discussion questions are designed to help us practice critical analysis, as well as writing. You are asked to respond to one of the questions below or, if some other aspect of the texts stands out to you, to develop your own question to which you write a response. You must incorporate and directly analyze specific evidence, especially quotations, from the text.In your response, please identify the discussion question to which you’re responding by including the DQ number. Your response should work toward making an interpretation of the text, an argumentative analysis (that doesn’t simply yield to a yes-or-no response). Discussion question responses don’t have a hard word count limit, but ideally, they should be at least/around 350 words, or one page. If something really peaks your interests and you’d like to write more, then, definitely do so!
(1) Beginnings and endings hold particular significance in narratives (that’s not to say, though, that the middles don’t matter). The opening, indeed, establish the thematic concerns that will reverberate and conflict throughout the work. Identify what motifs or issues the first chapter establishes and how it does so. Select one of those motifs/issues, and then, analyze where it crops up again (throughout or in chapters 2-6). Also, what kind of mood does the opening chapter create? We learn in the first sentence that Fight Club is narrated from the first-person point of view, so consider how that establishes a closer, more ‘personal’ narrative. Coupled with that, the book doesn’t follow the conventional, chronological structure (A–>Z; “Once upon a time…”–>”lived happily ever after”). So, how does the transition from the first to second chapter add to the peculiar emotional affect of the book’s beginning?
(2) What drives the narrator to attend the support groups? Insomnia might come to mind as the answer, but consider what the narrator’s doctor tells him: “Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what’s actually wrong” (19). That imperative is as much as of a command for us the readers, as it is for the narrator. How is insomnia described, and how do insomnia’s effects connect to the narrator’s lifestyle and relation to his career and apartment? Then, what function does the support groups perform for the narrator?
(3) Death permeates Fight Club. Contemporary American understandings and views on death are not that old. French historian Philippe Aris analyzed cultural thought and practices surrounding death in the last one-thousand years of Western Europe and America, arguing that the most recent transformation in the history of death occurred around the beginning of the twentieth century and WW1. Death became taboo, banished, medicalized, inflected with shame, seen as a form of failure–both biological and personal. How does death function in Fight Club? Also, what might we deduce from the text’s depiction of emotional and/or spiritual death? It would be significant to consider what the text asserts about the relationship between life and death, as well as the seeming diminishment of death’s presence in people’s lives. It’ll be important to consider not just what’s said about death but also who makes the comments on death and how death recurs in the narrative (ex: the type of support groups the narrator is a member of).
(5) How does the text characterize Marla? What function does it seem to be working towards establishing for her character (i.e.-her purpose for being in the narrative)? Her behavior, demeanor, what others say about her, her and the narrator’s similarities and differences–she gets a pretty fair amount of narrative attention early on. Smoking at cancer support groups? Yeah, there’s some irony there.
(6) Balls. Just to go ahead and call attention to what will become pretty clear early on: Fight Club alludes to, discusses, figuratively represents, and seems to worry a lot about testicles and penises. What function do genitalia in relation to masculinity (both literally and metaphorically) play in the novel? One can be emasculated regardless of whether their testicles have been removed. Big Bob embodies the narrative concern over balls, and he is, I would argue, maybe the most important character. Analyze Big Bob’s character and what he illustrates about masculinity in relation to socioeconomic success and gender ideals.
(7) Tyler Durden is one of the most famous figures in American art. Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Tyler in the filmic version of Fight Club is lauded as iconic. Durden is equally so in the novel. How does the narrative discuss him? Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 6 are important, here. Where and how does the narrator meet Durden? What’s his personality like? What’s his work say about his worldview?
(8) What happens to narrator’s apartment, and what does the narrator’s emotional response suggest about his lifestyle and the priorities of American culture in relation to socioeconomic status and lifestyle? It’ll be significant to analyze how the narrator discusses his apartment and what parts/things he focuses on.
(9) What is the purpose of fight club? Is there a philosophy to it? Analyze what the text says about the psychology, emotionality, and practices of fight club in relation to the impacts of American capitalism, adulthood, gender, and failure. If fight club is a response to or means of redress for another problem, what’s the cause, and how does the treatment attempt to ‘correct’ the issue?
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