Department of English and American Studies English Language And

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Petra Mašínová

The Element of Violence in Chuck Palahniuk’s Works Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Veronika Pituková

2013

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Veronika Pituková, for all her help, advice and willingness. Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 5

1. Violence in Popular Culture and Literature ...... 7

1.1. Definition of Violence ...... 7

1.2. Violence and the Media ...... 8

1.3. Violence and Pleasure ...... 10

2. Chuck Palahniuk and Violence ...... 12

2.1. Palahniuk’s Writing ...... 13

2.2. Transgressive Fiction ...... 16

3. Analyses of Palahniuk’s Novels with a Focus on the Elements of Violence ...... 18

3.1. Fight Club ...... 21

3.2. Choke ...... 28

3.3. Pygmy ...... 33

Conclusion ...... 39

Works Cited ...... 41

Introduction

Violence in fiction, from comic strips to bestsellers, movies, and television, is

no longer an aspect of many stories – violence and/or sex, too, is the story.

(Hsu 368)

Violence is deeply rooted in American culture. It is usual for Americans to own a gun; the estimated number of guns held by civilians is around three hundred million and the amount of deaths caused by guns is approximately thirty thousand every year. It is no wonder then, that violence is omnipresent; it is in movies, video games and also literature. One of the authors who deal with the topic of violence is Chuck Palahniuk.

Chuck Palahniuk is becoming increasingly popular every day. This is mainly due to his debut Fight Club and especially due to David Fincher who transformed the novel into a successful movie. There are still people who have never heard of Chuck

Palahniuk but it is not easy, especially among young generations, to find those who do not know Fight Club at least as a movie. There is a cult created around Palahniuk and his literary works. People quote passages from his novels and establish organizations similar to Project Mayhem or just get inspired by his characters. For example, there is a man in Florida who inspired by Victor from the novel Choke, walks around beautiful women pretending he is choking, and forces them to Heimlich him and then weeps and shows them pictures of his family trying to build a relationship with them.

One of the reasons why Palahniuk‟s novels are so popular are the topics of his novels. Sex and violence were always popular topics in literature and Palahniuk‟s

novels offer both. Readers can identify with his characters that are misunderstood underdogs but they still can have their happy endings of some sort.

In my thesis I will focus on the element of violence in Palahniuk‟s novels. I will outline the issues of violence in current culture and literature and try to find out, why is a topic of violence so popular among some people. Then through the analysis of three

Palahniuk‟s novels, I will explore and compare different types of violence that can be found there.

The thesis consists of two parts. First is theoretical and the other comprises of an analysis of Palahniuk‟s novels. In the first chapter I will provide a definition of violence and also take a look at it from the psychological point of view. Next chapter concentrates on the occurrence of violence in the current media, especially in the novels and I will try to explain why the topic of violence is so popular among people in the

United Stated in particular. I will also link violence and pleasure and explain why this connection is possible.

In the second chapter some events from Palahniuk‟s life will be presented, mostly the violent events that influenced his writing. In this chapter I will also take a look at Palahniuk‟s writing style, his inspirations and research methods and provide a characteristic of a genre called Transgressive fiction which is a genre Palahniuk could fit into.

In the second part of the thesis Palahniuk‟s novels are analyzed, namely Fight

Club (1996), Choke (2000) and Pygmy (2009). I will highlight and analyze the element of violence on particular passages of the novels. There can be found several types of violence in all three novels; these will be presented and compared.

1. Violence in Popular Culture and Literature

1.1. Definition of Violence

Patrick W. Shaw, in his work The Modern American Novel of Violence, defines violence as “any action, premeditated or not, that is performed with the purpose of injuring or killing another living creature, especially another human” (2). The term injury is further clarified as a visible wound that would be treated by doctor. Shaw‟s definition is limited to physical injuries which is insufficient. W. James Potter adds a psychological element and states that “violence is a violation of a character‟s physical or emotional well-being. It includes two key elements – intentionality and harm – at least one of which must be present” (80).

In The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness Erich Fromm distinguishes two kinds of violence. The first is “a phylogenetically programmed impulse to attack (or to flee) when vital interests are threatened” (24). This aggression is common for all animals.

“The other type, „malignant‟ aggression, i.e., cruelty and destructiveness, is specific to the human species and virtually absent in most mammals; it is not phylogenetically programmed and not biologically adaptive; it has no purpose, and its satisfaction is lustful” (Fromm 24). Humans rarely have the need to use violence in a defensive way and if so, it is mostly because other humans behave in an aggressive and destructive way. “Man differs from the animal by the fact that he is a killer; he is the only primate that kills and tortures members of his own species without any reason, either biological or economic, and who feels satisfaction of doing so” (Fromm 25). Even though most humans do not have the need to practice violence directly, there are still a lot of people who enjoy at least watching violence or reading about it.

1.2. Violence and the Media

Media and especially mass media is a frequently used term nowadays. It can be defined as “any form of communication to which large numbers of people have ready access” (Newton 2). This condition is met for example by newspapers, television, popular music or books. Newton states that the problem of violence in mass media was largely discussed in the 1990s since “almost everywhere one looked during the period, violent scenes and messages abounded. Motion pictures, television, popular music, video games, books, and magazines featured scenes of mayhem, sexual assault, murder, suicide, and other forms of violence” (2) and it was indisputable that so frequent depiction of violence must have had an effect on Americans. Despite the belief that violence is a new phenomenon, in his book Preposterous Violence, James B. Twitchell points out that “violence in literature can be traced back nearly 200 years, almost to the birth of the novel as a literary form” (Newton 3). On this topic Twitchell further adds that two prevailing themes in early and contemporary novel are romance and violence.

Already in the eighteenth century the topic of violence was widely popular among the public (Newton 5).

The reasons why violence is part of American culture and society can be found in its history. Historians have pointed out that “the United States was founded as a result of violent revolution . . . As settlers moved west, they waged a campaign of genocide against Native Americans and practiced a particularly violent form of personal and social justice within their own pioneer community” (Newton 6). Defined by their history Americans believe in the idea that it is all right to be violent to gain their goals and that any weakness in unacceptable.

John Fiske‟s explanation of the attractiveness of violence is that “violence on television is a concrete representation of class (or other) conflict in society. The heroes 8

and heroines that a society chooses to make popular at any one point in its history are those figures that best embody its dominant values. Conversely, its popular villains and victims are those who embody values that deviate from this norm” (134-5). According to Fiske violence in the media does not lead to violence in the society but on the contrary, the presence of displayed violence and its amount is proportional to the social system itself. “It is no surprise to find that the United States, where the difference between the haves and the have-nots is extreme, has the most violent popular television” (Fiske 135).

Both film and literature is the projection of people and the society in general.

People tend to look for their own stories in the viewed or read narratives and their reflection is based on their own experience. Usual pattern is that the more attractive, young and ordinary the character of the novel or the film is, the higher the chance that they are going to survive to the story‟s finale. Villains, on the other hand, are often physically and almost always mentally disadvantaged in some way. Fiske also explains why violence is popular especially among people who are somehow disadvantaged:

Violence is popular because it is a concrete representation of social domination

and subordination, and therefore because it represents resistance to that

subordination. The socially and racially disadvantaged can see their social

representatives in conflict with the forces of dominance, and in the early stages

of the narrative, in successful conflict: the villains win all but the final

fight (136).

Karen Boyle does not agree that violence in the media is responsible for the real life violence. In her study she points out that the one thing children who commit murders have in common is that they are all men. She is even of the opinion that

“blaming the media a way of not blaming boys and men” (7). This accusation is a little 9

narrow minded but it is true that men tend to be more violent than women. Even according to Fiske violence is an element especially of masculine popular cultures. It is likely that the most of Palahniuk‟s most violent characters are men. Although it cannot be implied that Palahniuk‟s women are helpless victims, they can act violently but still retain their femininity. Also female violence in Palahniuk‟s novels is more about psychological aggression than about physical.

1.3. Violence and Pleasure

According to Fiske the body is under the social control and the only possibilities of escaping it is through pain or pleasure (94). Minárik explains Fiske‟s theory in his thesis: “Even though sexuality might be the first connotation with body pleasures, Fiske barely mentions this extremely broad topic as a potentially attractive feature of a cultural text. Nevertheless, sexual content obviously still figures as a useful means of attracting audience” (28). The liberating aspect provides Fiske on the example of wrestling: “Wrestling‟s „spectacle of suffering‟ makes pain into an inversion of social norms, a liberating moment from normality, a symbolic statement of desire for freedom from social control that the terrified social order can never extinguish or finally discipline” (95). Palahniuk‟s characters are essentially doing the same thing. They try to break away from the social conventions and one of the possible ways is to use violence.

In the study “The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist”

Kavadlo writes:

Stories, like the characters, self-destruct – but never completely. There‟s just

enough left of them, and the narrative, to begin rebuilding . . . Palahniuk has

pioneered a new genre, the fiction of self-destruction: his subject and subtext for

all novels is, of course, self-destruction . . . despite bullet wounds to the head 10

(Fight Club and Invisible Monsters), car crashes and bombs (Fight Club), angry

mobs (nearly all books), a potential plane crash (Survivor), and bowel

obstruction and public stoning (Choke), Palahniuk‟s characters are really hardy

survivors, and the books, for all their shock and controversy, have fewer deaths

than the average airport-bookstore thriller” (Haunted and Lullaby are the

exceptions). (20-21)

The connection of pleasure and violence is natural. Violent behavior leads to the formation of endorphins which give people the feeling of happiness. The combination of violence and hormones also give one feeling that he/she is alive. This would be the case of Palahniuk‟s characters. They are often depressed and when they come to the brink of death with the option to return it helps them to realize they are still alive.

2. Chuck Palahniuk and Violence

The most interesting facts about Palahniuk are on the web page The Cult which is originally a fan page but now official web page devoted to Palahniuk. Charles

Michael Palahniuk was born on February 21, 1962 in Pasco, Washington. His family was underprivileged and he grew up living in a mobile home nearby Burbank,

Washington. His parents divorced when he was a teenager and after that he and his siblings started to live with their maternal grandparents at their cattle ranch. Chuck never knew his father‟s parents. His grandfather killed his grandmother in an argument over the cost of a sewing machine. After that he shot himself. Chuck‟s father (at that time 3 years old) was hiding under the bed watching it (Chaplinsky).

In 1999 Chuck‟s father was murdered by a jealous ex-boyfriend of a woman he met through a personal ad and dated. Dale Shackelford who had been imprisoned for sexual abuse at the time and after he was released, he shot both Donna and Chuck‟s father and then burned them in his cabin home. In the spring of 2001, Shackelford was charged guilty for first degree murders. Chuck was given a chance to decide whether

Dale should receive a death sentence. This was a difficult decision for Chuck and at the time he started to write the novel Lullaby that helped him to cope with the decision. In the novel Palahniuk deals with the right of man playing God. The question Palahniuk asks is whether just because one has the power to punish people for their crimes it gives him the right to do so. Although the message of the novel is that it does not, Palahniuk eventually voted for the death sentence. He repeatedly said that the best way of processing the violent events from his life is through art and humor. That is why he so often uses his own experiences and stories in his novels and shares his life with readers.

As an adult Palahniuk also became a member of Cacophony Society, which is a rebellious organization that specializes in performing various pranks that often involve costumes and are performed mostly on public places. Cacophony Society was an inspiration for many of his works, especially as the basis for Project Mayhem in Fight

Club (Ben Zackheim).

For Palahniuk writing about violence is a way to cope with tragic events from his life. When he shares his pain it is then easier for him to cope with it. It is similar to writing biography only Palahniuk hides his experiences behind someone else‟s stories.

2.1. Palahniuk’s Writing

It is not simple to characterize Palahniuk‟s writing style. The genre he could fit into is a genre of transgressive fiction but this inclusion says more about his topics than about specifications of his writing style. Feelings you get while reading Palahniuk are probably best described by Jose Kavadlo:

Imagine what it‟s like to have your eyes rubbed raw with broken glass. This is

what reading Chuck Palahniuk is like. You feel the shards in your eyes, yes, and

then you‟re being punched, hard, your nose is broken. Like the world is broken.

Livid because there‟s violence, but there‟s sex, there‟s the bodily fluids that

accompany violence and sex. Eyes rubbed in broken glass, first, then in blood

and lymph, and you want more. . . . And after you wipe the pulp from your eyes,

you realize something – the world is not broken. Somehow, the world feels more

together than before you started. This is what it feels like to read Chuck

Palahniuk. Broken, but something disturbing and beautiful recreated in its place.

And when you‟re done, you realize that everything really is all right. (3)

Although these feelings may not sound appealing, it can be assumed that this is exactly what readers nowadays want since Chuck Palahniuk is one of the best-selling authors of the 21st century. He is the author that brought many young people to reading. The reason for that is exactly that feeling that he can evoke with his novels. Palahniuk creates kinky, unlovable and broken characters and makes readers fall in love with them and root for them the whole time they read. According to Palahniuk “Great story is the one that gets you right in the guts” (Postcards from the Future) and that is the kind of stories he writes. In the interview for The Independent he said: “What I‟m always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of camp-fires and fire-places – the ghost stories that engaged us” (Arifa Akbar).

Palahniuk takes his job of a writer very seriously. In the first interview with Daniel

Robert Epstein Palahniuk talks about his writing career: “Well I stopped working a regular job in 1998 but it hasn‟t changed things a hell of a lot. I really committed that if

I‟m going to be a writer I‟m going to work as hard as I would any day job. So if I do that I could do at least one book a year and if I can‟t do that then I‟m not working at it hard enough” (“Chuck Palahniuk” SuicideGirls).

Palahniuk writes about his process of writing in his non-fiction work Stranger than Fiction. In the very first sentence of the introduction of his non-fiction work,

Palahniuk claims that his novels are about “a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people” (xv). This statement is intended for readers who “haven‟t already noticed”, because sometimes, it can be difficult to notice that Palahniuk‟s characters have the need to connect with the society. The obvious topics are sex and sexual identity, violence, consumer society, self-destructive characters who mostly live on the edge of society, but a theme of love is a little bit hidden.

His favorite part of writing is research. Before he started to write Fight Club,

Palahniuk worked in a hospice where part of his job was driving people to support- groups meetings:

Those meetings were uncomfortable because no matter how I tried to hide,

people always assumed I had the disease they had. There was no discreet way to

say I was just observing, a tourist waiting to take my charge back to hospice. So

I started retelling myself a story about a guy who haunted terminal illness

support groups to feel better about his own pointless life. (Stranger than Fiction

xviii)

When he was writing Invisible Monsters, he called unknown telephone numbers and asked strangers to tell him their dirty stories: “You can just call and say: „Hey, everybody, I‟m looking for hot brother-sister incest stories, let‟s hear yours!‟ or „Tell me about your dirtiest, filthiest cross-dressing fantasy!‟ and you‟ll be taking notes for hours” (Stranger than Fiction xix). Some stories people made-up, some were true.

Palahniuk takes the best examples and uses them in his novels. For Choke he not only visited sex-addict therapy sessions but also sat as a volunteer with Alzheimer patients:

“One subplot of Choke came together as, day after day, each patient would look at the same photo, but tell a different story about it” (Stranger than Fiction xx).

Palahniuk does not get the ideas for his novels only based on his own research but also from his own and his friends‟ lives. When he was stuck in his writing he came up with a topic of conversation and people reacted to it and created their own stories:

Writing Survivor, I‟d bring up the topic of cleaning hints, and people would

provide them for hours. For Choke, it was coded security announcements. For

Diary, I told stories about what I‟d, or left, sealed inside the walls of houses I‟d

worked on. Hearing my handful of stories, my friends told theirs. And their 15

guests told their stories. And within one evening, I had enough for a book.

(Stranger than Fiction xxi)

As he says in the film documentary Postcards from the Future, his stories are not so original; there are people who already do all that what he writes about. So the only difference is that Palahniuk somehow finds these people and their stories and shares them with readers.

2.2. Transgressive Fiction

Palahniuk himself declared that “Transgressive fiction is loosely defined as fiction in which characters misbehave and act badly, commit crimes or pranks as a way of either feeling alive or as political acts of civil disobedience” (Postcards from the

Future). In agreement with this definition Palahniuk would definitely fulfill the specifications of this genre.

However, there are still some who do not agree with that and are convinced that present-day literature is missing values of the original transgressive fiction. Megan

Dutriou is expressing those views in the article “Genre School: Transgressive Fiction” in Mahala online magazine1, where she compares authentic transgressive literature to what is considered to be this genre nowadays: “Transgressive literature used to be about breaking all the rules. The taboo subject matter of Transgressive lit is meant to bring you face to face with the very ugly, very violent, diseased and debauched members of our society” (here she mentions one of the first representatives of the genre – Marquis de Sade). In her opinion has “Chuck „One Trick Pony‟ Palahniuk” as much in common with transgressive fiction as the term “transgressive” with the idea of “nice”.

1 “Mahala is a free South African music, culture and reality magazine. . . . Mahala is home to challenging and incisive political and social commentary and strong, fearless opinions” (Mahala). 16

Despite this opinion there are still a certain number of people who consider

Palahniuk to be a representative of transgressive literature and there are definitely reasons for that. In his books Palahniuk regularly portrays people who stand on the edge of the society. These are usually people who commit petty crimes mostly with a purpose to disturb the harmony of society (for example Ida Mancini from Choke who is switching bottles of hair colors in a supermarket), or more significant one like the whole Project Mayhem portrayed in Fight Club. Palahniuk‟s characters are underdogs and as such they perfectly fit into the transgressive fiction genre.

3. Analyses of Palahniuk’s Novels with a Focus on the Elements of

Violence

All Palahniuk‟s works are full of violence presented in various forms. In this work there will be closely analyzed only three of Palahniuk‟s novels which are from different periods but the topic of violence is common for all of them. These are Fight

Club (1996), Choke (2000) and Pygmy (2009). But there are other novels that are also worth mentioning when considering the element of violence.

Distinctive topics in the second published novel Survivor (1999) are suicides and murders (as well as in the novel Diary).

In the same year were published Invisible Monsters. This was actually the first novel written by Palahniuk but publisher rejected it because it was too disturbing. All main characters tend to self-mutilation because they are unhappy with their lives.

Moreover, violent behavior against each other which culminates in murder frequently appears on the pages of Palahniuk‟s fiction.

Next published novel was Lullaby which was in the interview with Daniel

Robert Epstein described by Palahniuk as one of “sort of three books dedication to reinventing horror” (“Chuck Palahniuk” SuicideGirls). This category would also include his next two novels Diary (2003) and Haunted. Lullaby (published in 2002) is closely connected to Palahniuk‟s personal life. The story centers around an old African spell that has the power to kill people but it appears in the children‟s book with lullabies. In the novel Palahniuk discuss the human right to condemn other to death.

Palahniuk started to work on this novel during the trial with his father‟s murderer.

Shortly after Lullaby was published Shackelford was sentenced to death.

The novel Haunted (2005) again contains elements of self-mutilation and murders; this time in order to gain fame.

Little more specific is a novel Snuff 2 (2008). The connection of sex and violence is of great importance in this work. Former porn queen decides to crown her pornographic career by having sexual intercourse with 600 men. There is high probability that she dies during her performance and in the end she really does.

Fight Club is Palahniuk‟s first published book and was adapted by David

Fincher into a very successful movie. It was the movie that started the cult of Fight

Club, and highlighted Palahniuk‟s novel and several others that came after. The main protagonist of the novel is an unnamed narrator. Some readers assume that his name his

Joe3 because of his statements like “I am Joe‟s Broken Heart” (Fight Club 134). These statements come from the old magazines where people‟s organs talked about themselves in the first person. Joe suffers of insomnia. He starts to visits several support groups (for people with cancer, brain parasites etc.) which help him to fall asleep. In these groups he meets Marla Singer who falls in love with him. In the second interview by Daniel

Robert Epstein, he asked Palahniuk about Marla‟s character. His intention was to create kind of a Goth girl: “Marla was a way for sex and death to come back together with the support groups and falling in love in the face of death” (“Chuck Palahniuk 2”

SuicideGirls). At the beginning of the novel appears also Tyler Durden who is besides the narrator one of the main characters in the novel, although he is only narrator‟s split personality created by his insomnia. It is Tyler who starts the idea of fight Club and other projects that will be mentioned in the following chapters.

2 “A snuff movie is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual death or murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation” (IMDb). 3 For the purposes of this work the narrator will be used designation “Joe”. 19

Choke was also made into movie (directed by Clark Gregg), but it was not as successful as a movie Fight Club. The main figures of the novel Choke are especially

Victor Mancini and his friend Denny. They are both sex addicts and participate in a twelve steps program in which Victor is not very successful. Victor works as a historical interpreter at a theme park. An important part of Victor‟s life is his mother Ida who is currently in the nursing home and most of the time does not even know who Victor is.

When was Victor young she did not raise him and he grew up in foster homes. Ida kept kidnapping him though, so he spent substantial part of his childhood on the run with his mother. When visiting his mother, Victor meets Paige Marshall who is actually a patient in the facility but she pretends to be his mother‟s doctor. She convinces Victor that he was conceived via vitro fertilization using Jesus‟ foreskin; therefore he is a son of Jesus.

Victor‟s behavior from that moment on consists of actions which “would Jesus not do” because he does not like the idea of being a good person.

Pygmy is an epistolary novel written in a form of diary records. Since the novel consists of the records written by foreign visitor, it is written mostly in incorrect

English, mostly in Engrish4. The main protagonist and narrator is a thirteen-year-old exchange student who came from some totalitarian country to America with the task of destroying it. His host family nicknamed him Pygmy because of his short figure and exotic look. Pygmy writes notes about the American lifestyle, system of education and religious beliefs. He is disgusted with everyone except for his host sister for whom he has feelings. Pygmy is, as well as the other agents who came to the United States, well trained in marital arts, weaponry and killing. His records from his stay in America are interspersed with his memories from home country. In the end Pygmy fails in his task

4 Definition by Urban Dictionary: “Engrish is a form of English characterized by bad translation from Japanese by someone who is decent at translating vocabulary but has a poor grasp of English grammar. Tends to be a word-by-word literal translation with humorous results for native English speakers”. 20

because he decides he wants to stay in America with his new family. Christopher Tyler wrote in his review for The Guardian:

One long-running implication, given voice towards the end, is that the US is

doing such a good job of messing itself up that Operation Havoc is surplus to

requirements. Palahniuk‟s America reflects the worst suspicions of people from

across the political spectrum: money-mad, racist and mawkishly religious, it‟s

also filled with sexed-up housewives and weed-smoking teenagers casually

scoring morning-after pills.

America is depicted in the most negative way. Although described through the eyes of a biased foreigner it is actually a strong critique of contemporary American society.

In the following sections the selected novels will be further discussed with a focus on the elements of violence which are present in all of them.

3.1. Fight Club

The plot of a novel centers around fight club that was originally founded by

Tyler Durden as a place for men who are bored of their everyday life or job or who are angry at something/someone. Gradually it becomes a basis for the Project Mayhem which is established to fight against the society. There are several reasons why men participate in fights. One of them is a need to hurt oneself the others are just the need to fight for no sport or to get rid of anger towards someone from work or personal life. Joe

(the narrator) did not only want to destroy himself but also feels the need to destroy beautiful things around him. One night he tags a very beautiful young boy for a fight and beats him up completely. Tyler asks him then, what he was really fighting and his response is:

I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I‟d never have. Burn the Amazon rain

forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the

dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all

the fish I couldn‟t afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I‟d never see. I

wanted the whole world to hit bottom. (123)

The attitude “if I cannot have it then nobody can” is quite common for humans. For most people this is connected with love or material things but Joe seems to feel this way about spiritual values. No one can really have Amazon rain forests or the ozone but what these things represent is the inner peace and balance Joe would never have. He is frustrated with his life so he wants the whole world to feel miserable.

A usual phenomenon in fight club is that men who participate in fights are in their imagination fighting someone completely else than the person opposite to them.

They are fighting their fathers, their bosses or whoever they are mad at. The conversation between Tyler and Joe after their first fight tells a lot about the purpose of establishing fight club. Joe asks Tyler what he was fighting. “Tyler said, his father. . . .

There‟s nothing personal about who you fight in fight club. You fight to fight” (53-4).

Another reason for fighting is a desire to find out where are their boundaries: “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 mouse in cartoons, we were still alive and wanted to see how far we could take this and still be alive” (53).

They are fighting for the adrenalin that is released in their brains when they reach their limits.

Besides their day jobs, Tyler and Joe work as waiters in a luxury restaurant, where they “contaminate” food that rich people eat. This is one of the cases of destroying things they cannot have as well as hurting people they hated for being 22

snobbish members of the consumer society. Tyler also works as a projectionist in a movie theatre where he adds scenes with pornography into family movies to emotionally bully people who come to see them: “Tyler spliced penis into everything . . . Nobody complained. People ate and drank, but the evening wasn‟t the same. People feel sick or start to cry and don‟t know why” (31). Psychological violence in Fight Club complements the physical one but these small crimes in order to hurt people were just the beginning. As a weapon against conformity and consumer society, which is in the novel represented especially by IKEA, Tyler established Project

Mayhem. It includes about seventy men who represent some kind of army. It contains four committees which meet on a different nights: “Arson meets on Monday. Assault on

Tuesday. Mischief meets on Wednesday. And Misinformation meets on Thursday.

Organized Chaos. The Bureaucracy of Anarchy” (119). Each committee has different challenges. Generally their purpose is harming society via destroying things, hurting people or just bringing a little chaos and action into their stereotypical lives. They have weekly homework assignments to accomplish, e.g. to burn houses, initiate fights with passersby or point a gun to someone‟s head to give him a near-death experience so he starts to appreciate life. For this purposes they make their own explosives from the soap.

Kavadlo points out that “in Fight Club, behind the faces of regular, everyday products lie the means for terror and violence, much like the men who inhabit the world of Fight

Club itself. . . . Fight Club uses seemingly harmless merchandise to expose the potential for violence (18). Project Mayhem eventually becomes more and more destructive and violent. When there is a person who seeks to thwart their activities, they threaten him with cutting off his testicles or they simply kill the man. Men in Project Mayhem lose their inhibitions and humanity.

Being part of the Project Mayhem also means losing identity, men become soldiers working for Tyler and only after they die, they can have their name back. Every member of the Project has to have five hundred dollars in his shoe for his burial. Men in the project are referred to as Space Monkeys. They are no longer seen as individuals; every member becomes a part of a weapon of mass destruction.

Both fictional units, the fight Club and Project Mayhem are so popular among readers and viewers that there are several online groups who imitate these organizations.

There are web pages with homework assignments like in the Project Mayhem, for example: “Homework Assignment: Carry a screwdriver with you regularly. Remove random screws from things when the mood strikes you.” or “Write messages in a middle page of the spiral notebooks at the drug store. You know. Something for the kiddies“ (Project Mayhem). Palahniuk does not abet his readers to rebel against society but it surely is an effect his novels may have.

As mentioned above, one of the reasons for fighting in the fight club was an urge to hurt oneself. The narrator of the novel feels the need to be less perfect. His explanation why he goes to the club is “I just don‟t want to die without a few scars . . .

It‟s nothing any more to have a beautiful stock body” (48). Among the values recognized by contemporary society definitely belongs being beautiful and by destroying their own bodies they are also destroying these values.

The relationship between Tyler and Joe can be seen as sadomasochistic but as

Kavadlo explains in his essay on Fight Club “Two sides to a split personality, the narrator and Tyler turn their acts of sadomasochism into masochism alone . . . what the narrator has been fighting, literally and figuratively, is himself” (5). Technically every moment of violence between Tyler and Joe, for example the moment when Tyler burns the kiss on Joe‟s hand with the flakes of lye is seen as sadistic until the reader finds out 24

that the two of them are the same person and therefore Joe was only hurting himself the whole time. Even before the foundation of the fight club there are indications that Joe has self-violent and suicidal tendency. “As the end of the runway ran up to meet us with our smoking materials extinguished, I prayed for a crush” (26). This is probably due to the apathy towards his own life. It seems pointless until he starts visiting the fight club.

When he starts fighting there almost every week, he is being beaten a lot but he continues and enjoys his wounds: “Maybe self-improvement isn‟t the answer. . . .

Maybe self-destruction is the answer” (49). There is no particular question leading to this answer but it can be assumed that he means the ultimate question of the meaning of life.

In the end Joe is not comfortable with the way the Project Mayhem is developing and he wants to leave it which is not possible. The only way out is death so he goes to the fight club and registers for fight with every man in the club with the only intention: “I want to be dead. Because only in death do we have names. Only in death are we no longer part of project Mayhem” (201). It seems that death is a universal solution to Joe‟s frustration with life and actually everything. In the very end of the novel, when Joe already knows that he and Tyler are the same person, he realizes that the only chance to get rid of Tyler is to kill him. This act is presented as a murder: “I‟m not killing myself, I yell. I‟m killing Tyler” (205) but in reality it is a suicide after all.

Joe is not the only person in the novel who hurts himself. Marla also has very negative attitude towards her own existence and her body: “„I embrace my own festering diseased corruption,‟ Marla tells the cherry on the end of her cigarette. Marla twists the cigarette into the soft white belly of her arm. „Burn, witch, burn‟“ (65). Marla also attempts to commit suicide, or at least, pretends to do so: “This wasn‟t a for-real suicide, Marla said, this was probably just one of those cry-for-help things, but she had 25

taken too many Xanax” (59). Marla‟s “dying” is depicted as a very casual thing. She invites Joe to watch her and when he denies because he already has other plans, her response is very disproportionate “That‟s okay, Marla said, she could die just as well watching television. Marla just hoped there was something worth watching” (59). It is possible that Marla‟s indifference to her own death is only feigned because she knows she is only pretending the suicide. The other possibility is she really has no interest in living.

Participants of the Project Mayhem also behave in a self-destructive manner.

They not only risk their lives (or at least freedom) in the assignments, they are even forced to burn off their own fingerprints with the lye so if arrested no one could identify them.

Self-harm makes up a large part of the Fight Club in various ways but the most obvious is definitely the fight club alone. Characters in the novel live their stereotyped lives and the only way to feel alive again is to break their habits and do something different, dangerous and exciting. Self-violence in Fight Club serves mainly as an instrument of getting rid of the frustrations of life.

Moreover, in Palahniuk‟s novels, love and sex are very often connected with violence or even with death. In Fight Club narrator visits support groups for people with various diseases. In one he meets a girl whose only concern is not that she is dying but the lack of sexuality at the end of her life: “Chloe tells me the worst thing about her brain parasites was no one would have sex with her. Here she was, so close to death . . . and all Chloe wanted was to get laid for the last time. Not intimacy, sex” (Fight Club

19). It almost seems that for Chloe her sex life has a higher value than her very existence.

Ironically, one of the causes of violence among people is love. It is also a significant element in Palahniuk‟s novels. Although it does not seem so, Palahniuk claims himself to be “the biggest romantic you‟re probably ever going to meet” he also adds that all his novels “are all romantic comedies” . . . "But they‟re just romantic comedies that are done with very dysfunctional, dark characters (Straus). In Fight Club the cause of all the violence performed by project Mayhem is love. At the very beginning of the story, the reader already knows that the following violence “all of this: the gun, the anarchy, the explosion is really about Marla Singer” and some sort of romantic triangle is revealed “I want Tyler. Tyler wants Marla. Marla wants me” (14).

It is not certain if the cause is Joe‟s love for Tyler or for Marla. Joe probably fell in love with Marla but he also has very close relationship with Tyler. He admires him and in some way even loves him “Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I‟m not” (174). When Tyler and Marla start dating he is obviously jealous but it is not clear of whom. Of course Tyler and Joe are the same person so this triangle is not real but in Joe‟s mind Tyler seems to be other man so it could definitely cause his vindictive behavior.

Unlike the other two analyzed novels, Fight Club does not portray any rape scenes. Nevertheless, sexual relationship between Tyler and Marla is very rough, rather sadistic and dominant; there is more violence than love: “You can hear Marla and Tyler in his room, calling each other human butt wipe. Take it, human butt wipe. Do it butt wipe. Choke it down. Keep it down, baby” (64). A peak of their “relationship” is

Marla‟s confession that “she wanted to get pregnant. Marla said she wanted to have

Tyler‟s abortion” (59). This feeling is extremely unnatural for any woman and it proves

the perversity of their relationship. Abortion is relatively violent procedure for a body and it is probably related to Marla‟s self-harming tendencies.

3.2. Choke

Choke is not as distinctly violent when compared to Fight Club or Pygmy.

Rebellion against society in Choke includes small crimes like switching hair colors in local store or liberation of animals from a zoo. Children visiting the museum shake chicken eggs which lead to birth of deformed chickens with only one eye or paralyzed legs or “the lucky ones are just born dead” (122). More significant crime commits

Victor‟s mother who keeps kidnapping him from his foster parents but this act is actually only violation of law because Ida loves her child and does not hurt him, at least not physically. As an act of violence against humanity can be seen a so called “granny dumping” (57) which means leaving old parents on the side of the street like some people who do that with unwanted pets, where they are found and taken care of by nursing homes.

There are two events in the book where violence is more noticeable. First is stoning of Victor at the end of the book by people who find out that they have been deceived by his pretended choking: “All the people who thought they loved me. Who thought they‟d given me back my life. The legend of their lives, evaporated. Then one hand comes up with a rock, and I close my eyes” (290). At first. the reader assumes that those people are going to kill Victor, but then, there is no sign of Victor being hurt and the house build by Denny is ruined. This act of violence is again caused by love.

People‟s feelings are hurt so they have a desire to take revenge on the person who caused their pain.

Second, and more significant example of violence, is “manslaughter” of Victor‟s mother. Victor believes he is a son of Jesus and decides to save his dying mother. With good intentions, Victor comes to hospital to feed her but he gives her too much pudding and she is not able to swallow the amount he gives her. After all, Victor‟s pretended choking and Ida‟s death are very symbolic and her death is described in great detail:

Her chest heaves, and brown pudding bubbles out her nose. Her eyes roll back.

Her skin, it‟s getting bluish. . . . Her hands and arms tremble, and her head

arches back into her pillow. . . . Her face and hands are more blue. Her eyes

rolled over white. Everything smells like chocolate. . . . Heaving and flopping,

her hands clawing at her throat. (269-70)

Victor watches his mother die and it is an exact copy of his pretended choking, it is a some kind of punishment for his scams.

Victor started with pretending choking when he was a child. His mother was a drug addict and was not a very nurturing mother. One day, when eating corn dog, he started to choke. After his mother saved him “the child was crying and the entire restaurant crowded around. . . . It seemed that the moment would last forever. That you had to risk your life to get love” (3). Adult Victor does not pretend to be choking just to get his saviors money; he also does it for that feeling of being loved that he is longing for his whole life. Besides the obvious rewards he gets from his saviors it can be also assumed that the dose of adrenalin he receives when he finds himself on the brink of life is quite pleasant and thrilling. It is similar to the near-death experience sought by men in

Fight Club. Victor‟s choking could end in death any time but it does not bother him.

Either he believes that there will always be someone who will rescue him or he does not care enough about his own life or to be afraid that his plan might fail.

Choking is obviously very painful and unpleasant but Victor believes that pain is a price he has to pay for love and the pain is worth it. Also pain is a challenge for him; when he has his bowels blocked by anal beads, he refuses to see a doctor although he is in a great pain. In this moment of the novel Victor believes he is a son of Jesus and when Jesus withstood suffering, he can as well. The same as Jesus he wants to feel the pain to redeem his sins.

Victor is using his fake dying as a way of getting from unpleasant situations.

When he is taken to the police station for interrogation Victor tries his choking trick again. This time he is seriously choking but the policemen are reading Victor‟s diary where he writes about his previous choking and do not believe he is not faking it again:

“The stupid little boy who cried wolf (281). Even though Victor‟s life is seriously threatened at the moment, he is not afraid: “For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel peaceful. Not happy. Not sad. Not anxious. Not horny” (281). The feeling that death is the only peaceful place has Victor in common with Joe from Fight

Club who also felt that the only place where he can find peace is death.

A significant element in Choke is sexuality. Both main characters are sex addicts and participate in twelve-step program. At their meetings members are sharing their stories. “This idea of sharing what is painful or strange is central to Palahniuk‟s fictions.

He says his research for Choke took place mostly at the gym, where after telling some fellow Stairmaster or weight lifter that he was writing a novel about sex addicts, he would be inundated with stories of their own sex addiction” (Straus). Pleasure and pain are very often connected; the connection Palahniuk focuses on does not involve some kind of sadomasochistic relationships but rather injuries that can happen during some sexual acts. For sexual addicts sex is like a drug, they are able to do anything to be satisfied and their deeds often lead to injury: 30

These people are legends. . . . In 1950s a leading vacuum cleaner tried a little

design improvement. It added a spinning propeller, a razor-sharp blade

mounted a few inches inside the end of the vacuum hose. . . . What happened is

a lot of these men raced to the hospital emergency room with their dicks

mangled. . . . The legendary woman who gives head to guys who are driving,

only the guy loses control of his car and hits the breaks so hard the woman

bites him in half, . . . These are the people who come waddling in from the

night, saying they tripped and fell on the zucchini, the light bulb, the Barbie

doll, the billiard balls, the struggling gerbil. (10-11)

This is not the only time Palahniuk writes about characters that injure themselves while masturbating. There is a short story “Guts” (partially used in the novel Haunted) that contains tales of different people who manage to damage their health for the purpose of sexual gratification. This story is known for its effect on readers when read publicly.

Several people always faint when the story is read (Postcards from the Future).

Characters in Choke do not consider sex to be part of love or relationship. Sex is only an instrument of pleasure and it is often connected with violence. There are two situations where the topic of rape is presented. Normally any unwanted sexual violence against other person is perceived as an act of negative behavior “for example, sexual violences, such as rape and sexual assault, can be understood, from one point of view, as specific forms of (often male) sexuality, and then, from another point of view, not as sexuality, but rather as forms of violence” (Hearn & Burr 1). But in Choke the act is not taken seriously at all; both cases concerning the topic of rape are presented as humorous situations.

Victor meets a girl Gwen whose fantasy is to be raped and they arrange a fake rape scene in her house. Whole situation is rather comical because the conditions of 31

rape are specified in advance in such detail that from the features of a real rape stays nothing. “„For crying out loud,‟ she says. „This is way out of bounds. I said you could rape me. I did not say you could ruin my pantyhose‟” (171). Beside this fake rape there is another one, also fake. In the nursing home lives an old woman Eva who thinks

Victor is her older brother who raped her when she was little. One day Victor says it was him who did it and apologizes to her. In the end of the novel policemen come to arrest Victor for the rape. Victor thinks they mean Gwen so he unintentionally confesses to two crimes. “„Oh, her,‟ I say, „I thought you meant this other rape‟” (274). In the end it is clarified that no real rape was committed (at least by Victor).

3.3. Pygmy

The main storyline of the novel concentrates around Operation Havoc. A goal of this operation, similar to Project Mayhem from Fight Club, is destroying the United

States. Therefore in this novel violence again serves as a weapon against some political regime. To this purpose, several well-trained agents are sent to America to learn its culture and the best way to destroy it. As the best instrument is chosen American money that should be poisoned and spread among people. They decide to destroy America with the thing it loves the most. Protagonist of the novel, Pygmy, has very negative attitude towards the United States and his host family. He keeps having thoughts about killing them – “begins here delicious tang of host family, thin American blood already salt on hot tongue of operative me. Already is decadent host family flesh tear by operative teeth” (6). Pygmy and other agents know plenty of deadly combat maneuvers. Pygmy kicks off Trevor‟s head when he starts a massacre at student‟s model of the United

Nations. Trevor manages to shoot several of his schoolmates: “head of delegate Sri

Lanka explode. Second muzzle flash, head of delegate blond cornrows Zaire explode”

(89). Pygmy does not intervene immediately; he obviously has no interest in saving

American‟s lives.

Even before this event Trevor‟s behavior was violent. He enjoyed bullying his schoolmates including Pygmy‟s host brother. Pygmy witnesses the scene where Trevor hurts his “brother”: “‟Hand over the cash, dick-wad…” Face of pig dog, pinched under shoe, flat on top of floor, nose of host brother leak blood and liquid mucus in mix puddle around crack lips” (11). He stands up for him which leads to his own bullying and then to Pygmy‟s revenge.

The agents also perceive very negatively American religion and especially church. Another one of operatives Magda uses learned maneuvers to attack local pastor 33

during the baptism ceremony: “Next then, red cloud bloom in water, red billowing in water, more dark red until no clear. . . . No wave or bubble or splash. Only devil Tony and agent 36 gone, buried, full below red liquid” (29). For agents the violent behavior against the United States is natural. In his memories from home country, Pygmy describes the training of the agents. They are trained to be heartless and cruel: “Action of mercy, say instructor, an insult to eye of deity. . . . Only tragedy if suffer and die during innocent. No sin, no crime, then extinction not earned (41). They are forced to vote if some rodent should be killed and yes is the only acceptable answer. Agents are taught to have no mercy with the enemy or with anyone who could interrupt their mission. During the combat training two agents are fighting, one of them is clearly week and the other beats him and acts slightly arrogant about it. Their instructor enters into this scene and disgusted with the agent requires a gun: “Respected instructor directs pistol aim upon crumple Boban, click trigger to cocked. . . . Operative Pavel fashion mouth to make curling smile of pleasure. . . . That same current now, Pavel smiling head explode. . . . For official record, announce instructor, the state requires no epic hero” (68-9). In the next moment, agent Boban is also shot for being week and useless.

The agents work in a similar way as Space Monkeys in project Mayhem. They should not be individuals but well-trained army which is are capable and willing to do anything for its purpose.

Operatives are taken away from their parents as small children after passing a difficult test. They do not even seem to remember their parents. When during a ceremonial parade operative‟s parents try to contact him, they are instantly killed right in the middle of the crowd.

The novel contains several quotations from famous dictators, politicians and philosophers that match the story. There is even one as an epigraph of the novel: “He 34

alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” This one is from Adolf Hitler who is mentioned several times in the novel. Among others are for example Karl Marx, Mao

Tse-tung, Mikhail Bakunin, Che Guevara, Leon Trotsky, and others. All these men, greatest leaders of history and some of them even greatest villains, serve as role models for Pygmy and it is him who mostly quotes them in the novel.

Violence in Pygmy is mostly aimed against other humans than against oneself.

Nevertheless, it is possible to find some self-harming tendencies even in this novel.

After Trevor has been raped by Pygmy, he starts to suffer with Stockholm syndrome and believes he is in love with Pygmy. He confesses his love to Pygmy and threatens he will shoot himself if he tells anyone about it. When Pygmy rejects Trevor he starts a massacre at student‟s model of United Nations with the intention of getting killed.

Trevor wrote Pygmy in a letter: “„If you won‟t share my life with me, maybe you‟ll share my death.‟ . . . „Sorry about tomorrow at the United Nations, how I‟m tricking you to kill me‟” (224). Although Trevor claims he wants to be killed by his loved one, it is possible that he is simply too week to kill himself.

After killing Trevor, Pygmy is suddenly very popular. This can be reasoned by two things, one is that Pygmy proved his strength and masculinity which are considered very important qualities in American society, and although he is short he is no longer perceived as weak and pitiable but as a dangerous man. The other is that his schoolmates want him to hurt them so they can delay their exams: “„Pygmy, my man.‟

Offer elbow bent own arm, say, „Now break my arm!‟ Say, „I got a test on Silas Marner next period‟” (162). They do not have the determination (or strength) to do it themselves so they need someone who can.

Sexuality in Pygmy is presented in two different ways. There is an American point of view and the other one is presented by Pygmy and other operatives. Americans 35

see sex as a source of pleasure. Pygmy and the other operatives are taught “how in

America told all ladies glad liberated to always expose many fragrant vaginas. No ever possess maidenhead. Develop hobby of many frequent abortion” (15). From the beginning of their training the operatives are taught to perceive sex as an instrument; as a weapon against their enemies. At the age of eight they receive some kind of sexual education where they are told that all Americans are perverts “thus for top method gain access government, attain power over individual, must operative merely engage enjoined sodomy within American” (174), then to blackmail this man in order to obtain his cooperation. This education includes practical training on their instructor: “This today, study location prostate. Next today, clitoris. Second next today, nipples. . . . In vengeance against American predators must total operative graduate expert in pleasing all pedophile for extortion” (177). It is very probable that this kind of illustrative teaching leads to psychological scarring of the agents. Children that are forced to learn on their teacher different sexual techniques are doomed to a warped perception of the sexual act but this may be one of the objectives of their commanders. Pygmy uses sex as a weapon after he is insulted by Trevor. He attacks him in a mall bathroom and rapes him. Unlike Choke the rape in Pygmy is not comical at all. The rape scene is described in detail and it is deeply violent and disturbing:

Neck hand of operative me make finger straight to dig nail, sharp shovel into

pucker pinch blue anus muscle. All body suffocated, only still seizure every

muscle as straight fingernail drill through pucker and pull sideways to stretch

open hole. Pry. Force open, dry, all friction, all peel of tender membrane until

head of weapon wedge room in twist of muscle. (18)

During the rape Pygmy is describing bleeding Trevor using colors and symbols of

American flag. Through the use of this metaphor it is clear that Pygmy is raping not only Trevor but his hatred is directed toward whole America:

Bully blood leak out of nose down white tile wall. American flag, red and white

stripes sliding to tile floor. Blue face, nose folded sideways. Seeing stars. . . .

Electric-bolt eyes of bully bleeding water. Blue star of fighting anus leak blood

into thin stripes down white legs. Everywhere patriotic. Here so great American

nation. (18)

Assuming Trevor represents American identity; by raping him Pygmy not only showed his dominance over him but also over whole America. By taming Trevor‟s pride he tamed the American one. Ironically the rape leads to the fact that Trevor falls in love with Pygmy and later to Trevor‟s death.

The other way of perceiving sex by operatives is an instrument for reproduction.

The first phase of Operation Havoc and destroying the United States is the task for boys to impregnate American girls: “„Operative Chernok by current now seeded often several American female.‟ Say, „Operative Mang planted embryo own host mother”

(48). For operatives, sex is just another combat maneuver: “Magda whisper, hot breathing at ear, „Must quick, Pumping Rabbit Maneuver, squirt-squirt, plant seed into her‟” (49). Unfortunately, for operatives American girls do not stay pregnant for a very long time. Every time someone succeeds, the girl has an abortion so it seems impossible to fulfill their task.

Violence in Pygmy is the most significant one. The whole novel is about destroying one nation with any possible weapons. Also the sexual violence is portrayed more drastically than in the other two novels. In Choke acts of violence against others are mostly unfortunate coincidences or serve as a source of humor as in case of sexual 37

violence. Fight Club is practically based on violence. For men in the club violence is an escape from their lives; it is sport and relaxation. Project Mayhem on the other hand serves only for destroying social values both tangible and intangible. What almost all characters of the three novels have in common is their lack of self-confidence and negative attitude towards their own existence. All of them live on the edge of society where they are not able to integrate because they are deviating from the norm. Whether it is an inability to settle for a stereotypical life in Joe‟s case, sexual deviation in

Victor‟s or the fact Pygmy is a trained killer with the intention to destroy American society, they all are outcasts that society will never accept. And this is the kind of people that most often have an inclination to violent behavior.

Conclusion

In this thesis I offered a closer look on the topic of violence in Palahniuk‟s novels. In the theoretical part I started by defining violence and its unique form in the case of the human species. I have dealt especially with the occurrence of the violence in current popular culture and mass media, and the reasons why the topic of violence is so attractive for the audience with the focus on American recipients.

In the second chapter I outlined the personality of Chuck Palahniuk, especially the violent events in his life that had an influence on his writing. I presented reasons why is violence one of the main topics of Palahniuk‟s literary works. Then I outlined his writing techniques, inspirations and research methods. I also characterized the genre of

Transgressive fiction which is a genre Palahniuk is often connected with.

In the analytical part I offered a few examples of Palahniuk‟s novels that share a common element of violence. Then in deeper analyses I took a look at three Palahniuk‟s novels and I analyzed the novels and demonstrated various types of violence on the examples from the novels. In the analyses I concentrated especially on the violence caused to the other humans, self-harming tendencies of main characters and sexual violence. I proved that Palahniuk‟s novels have a common element of violence in different forms. In Palahniuk‟s novels violence serves as a source of humor, especially in Choke, as an instrument of self-realization, mostly in Fight Club or as a weapon against consumer society which can be found both in Fight Club and Pygmy. All three novels depict many examples of self-harming tendencies of the characters which were caused mostly by boredom in their lives, their exclusion from society or the negative attitudes towards their own bodies. As stated in the theoretical part of the work, violent

behavior is frequent among people who deviate from social norms and who are in some way disadvantaged. Palahniuk‟s characters fulfill the following conditions almost without reservations and that is the reason why the topic of violence can be found in all of his novels.

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Résumé (English)

Diploma thesis deals with literary work of Chuck Palahniuk with the focus on the elements of violence in his novels. Palahniuk is one the best-selling and most read authors nowadays. Not only in the United States, but also in the rest of the world. He became famous especially thanks to his debut Fight Club that was made into a film by director David Fincher. The film enjoys great popularity among general public.

Palahniuk is read especially among the young generation thanks to the topics of his novels. These are mainly sexual themes, violence, search for identity, consumer society, living on the edge of society and the pursuit of social inclusion. All these themes assign

Palahniuk to the Transgressive literature genre. This genre is briefly outlined in the thesis. Diploma thesis focuses on the topic of violence in Palahniuk novels. The theoretical part deals with the definition of violence and its occurrence in today‟s film and literature. Further, the topic is situated into the context of today‟s popular culture.

The thesis is trying to answer the question why violence is so popular in contemporary society. The thesis monitors violent events from Palahniuk‟s live which are reflected in his work and also Palahniuk‟s writing style, process of creating of his novels, searching for inspiration for his works. In the analytical part the thesis briefly mentions some of

Palahniuk‟s novels with the focus on a common element of violence. This part is followed by detail analysis of novels Fight Club, Choke, and Pygmy with a focus on different types of violence which are common for all of these novels. This chapter consists of demonstrated examples and an occurrence of these elements in individual novels and its comparison.

Résumé (Czech)

Diplomová práce se zabývá literárním dílem autora Chucka Palahniuka, se zaměřením na tématiku násilí v jeho díle. Palahniuk je v současné době jeden z nejprodávanějších a nejčtenějších autorů nejen ve Spojených Státech, ale i ve světě.

Proslavil ho hlavně jeho první román Fight Club, který byl zfilmován Davidem

Fincherem a u diváků se těší velké popularitě. Díky tématům svých knih je populární hlavně u mladé generace. Jedná se převážně o témata sexu, násilí, hledání vlastní identity, konzumní společnost, život na okraji společnosti, případně zařazení se do společnosti. Všechna tato témata řadí Palahniuka k žánru transgresivní literatury. Tento

žánr je v práci stručně nastíněn. Diplomová práce se zaměřuje na téma násilí v Palahniukově díle. V teoretické části se nejprve zabývá definicí násilí a jeho výskytem v současné filmové a literární tvorbě, společně se zařazením do současné populární kultury a následně se snaží odpovědět na otázku, proč je násilí v současné společnosti tématem tak populárním. Práce se věnuje násilným událostem z Palahniukova života, které se odrazily v jeho tvorbě a také stylem Palahniukova psaní, procesem vzniku jeho románů a hledáním inspirací pro jeho díla. V analytické části práce stručně zmiňuje několik Palahniukových románů a poukazuje na společný prvek násilí v těchto románech. Následně podrobně analyzuje romány Fight Club, Choke a Pygmy, se zaměřením na výskyt různých typů násilí, které mají tyto díla společné. V těchto kapitolách je na příkladech ukázán a srovnán výskyt těchto prvků v jednotlivých románech.