Fight Club Notes

Aidan O’Connor Investigating English Language: An examination of applied irony in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. 1.0 Introduction As a writer who grounded many of his works in the genre of transgressive fiction, Chuck Palahniuk wrote to transcend the typical boundaries of novels stories. In doing so, Palahniuk developed characters confined by the conventions and expectations of their surrounding society that sought to escape their confines through anti-heroic and rebellious methods entailing a number of social taboos. Fight Club parallels this direction of content in its literary linguistic makeup, using multiple strains of the concept of irony as rhetorical devices to complement Palahniuk’s transgressive work. Irony offers an alternative concealed method of conveying information that does not render the reader submissive to direct expression in a fashion that discourages the reading audience from formulating their own assertions. Analysing the presence of irony in Fight Club, which manifests in a multitude of capacities including Romantic, dramatic, situational, verbal and Socratic irony, this essay will formulate its examination of these qualities using the following thesis: Chuck Palahniuk’s application of irony in Fight Club conveys information through a concealed means of encoding language that is integral to establishing a transgressive opposition to social norms and expectations endorsed by the narrating protagonist. 2.0 Romantic Irony Chuck Palahniuk’s incorporation of a main character who frequently transitions between the roles of protagonist and narrator provides a delivery that includes elements of metafiction akin to Romantic irony. Romantic irony is achieved in Fight Club through the employment of second person narrative during period when the unnamed main character serves as a narrator: 1 Aidan O’Connor “…the first step to eternal life is you have to die… To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound. You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand… You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerin.” (Palahniuk (2006: 11-12)) A second person narrative mode, through the narrator acknowledges the reader, creates an element of interactivity with Palahniuk’s audience that is more often present amongst works of non-fiction. This notion is aided by the second person narrative’s coupling with other linguistic devices conventionally associated with non-fiction, instructional works. These include short sentences introduced by and including adverbs and transitive verbs that create a chronological sequence of imperatives; as if components of a self-help guide: “Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper.” (Palahniuk (2006: 12)) In the process, this voice rejects the novel genre’s conventional efforts to immerse readers in an alternative reality that suspends their self-awareness (Ryan (1999)). Instead, the likes of second person pronouns transcend the narrative boundary and subsequently draw attention to its existence as a work of fiction. This exposes the novel’s illusory world; encouraging reader’s to critically reflect on their own existence in a manner reminiscent of epic drama’s Marxist approach to visual performance (Counsell (1986: 106-107)). The effects of this ironic distance between the novel’s content and the audience exposed to its fictional status by the narrator’s use of a second person narrative voice are addressed by Colebrook (2004: 3) who cites irony’s distancing function as a method of determining the meaning behind an utterance without directly disclosing the necessary context. In doing so, elements of sincere immediacy are avoided, allowing readers to extract hidden meaning from text. 2 Aidan O’Connor Colebrook’s citing of Romantic irony being separated from any sincere commitment to the text closely relates to the novel’s transgressive genre storyline; a documentation of similar efforts to displace loyalty to pre-existing conventions through their destruction. As part of this process, the incorporation of second person pronouns emulates the imperative addressing of potential consumers applied by advertisers of material goods that encapsulate traits of capitalism the unnamed narrating protagonist attempts to erase with his anarchistic scheme to bring about the downfall of America’s debt system. Imperative addressing communicates a sense of authority over the reader that recreates the suppressive nature of a consumer society. This association between Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive ideological content and the implementation of a second person narrative as a method of Romantic irony that dispels the illusion of fiction is sustained by similar connections in two of Palahniuk’s other works, the novel Diary and the “Foot Work” short story of his Haunted collection. With similar sentiments between literary presence and linguistic implementation, the notion of rebellious dislocation from the norm is conveyed both superficially and ironically; appealing to the popular and intellectually elite readers of Fight Club. 2.1 Situational Irony Fight Club’s narrative development concludes with the manifestation of situational irony arising out of Palahniuk’s non-chronological sequencing of pivotal scenarios in the novel. This most aptly exhibits itself regarding the revelation pertaining to the relationship between the unnamed narrating protagonist and the character Tyler Durden, which is only revealed following extensive interaction between the two as opposed to prior to any interfacing. This variation conveys the significance of context in fully understanding linguistic utterances. Palahniuk commences the novel incorporating the use of the first person plural pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ as the narrator transitions into his role as a character: “We both stood there, Tyler rubbing the side of his neck and me holding a hand on my chest, both of us knowing we'd gotten somewhere we'd never been and like the cat and 3 Aidan O’Connor mouse in cartoons, we were still alive and wanted to see how far we could take this thing and still be alive.” (Palahniuk (2006: 53)) Out of the unnamed narrating protagonist’s use of plural pronouns, situational irony arises as it communicates a meaning that transcends its literal interpretation. The author exploits the lack of context surrounding the protagonist’s use of ‘we’, alongside the incorporation of Tyler Durden as a speaking personality within the opening chapter to force the reader to solely rely on their conventional assumption of the word ‘we’ as addressing multiple individuals. This in turn heightens the dramatic climax of the novel’s revelation that the protagonist, as one person, transitions between two forms of consciousness that have each developed personalities. Inverting the circumstances under which the plural pronoun ‘we’ is conventionally applied, the process is evidence of the significance of contextual information. According to the theory of relevance, context is integral to deciphering the presence of irony and accurately understanding the intended implicatures behind one’s utterances, motivating Palahniuk’s audience to continue reading in the process. Sperber and Wilson (1986: 15-16, 176) assert the importance of context in the interpretation process of decoding hidden communication that is essential to the comprehension of irony, citing context’s psychological construct as superior to reality’s actual state in affecting the interpretation of an utterance. Subsequently, coded communication’s subservience to the autonomous inferential process is a predominant power hierarchy in the interpretation of irony. This relationship parallels the one shared by Chuck Palahniuk and Fight Club’s reading audience. When applied to the transgressive ideologies behind Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, the deliberate withholding of context related to the dual-personality of the narrating protagonist exposes the weaknesses of social constructs and the assumptions readers draw from them within the popular understanding of fiction. The revelation that Palahniuk’s use of ‘we’ does not relate to multiple people as conventions would have one believe forces the reader to acknowledge and reflect on the uninformed position they have assumed throughout the 4 Aidan O’Connor novel until the climactic scene. Also, incorporating a protagonist who shares the same level of understanding as the reader, learning of his condition as Palahniuk’s audience does, allows them to relate to the unnamed narrating protagonist instead of interpreting the withholding of information as a belittling of their susceptible position to the decisions of the author. Through its application, this example of situational irony relates to the revolutionary anarchistic elements of the novel’s content and Palahniuk’s association with transgressive fiction. This serves the practical purpose of creating a plot development that attempts to inspire his audience to finish reading the novel. 2.2 Dramatic Irony In contrast to situational irony’s rendering of the reader subjective to the prolonged delivery of contextual information pertaining to the narrative Chuck Palahniuk offers in Fight Club, dramatic irony also manifests in the novel. This plot device is notably achieved through passages that incorporate the frequent

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