Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Petra Mašínová

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

Supervisor: Mgr. Veronika Pituková

2012

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

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

2

Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Veronika Pituková, for her advices and willingness.

3 Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ...... 5

1. VIOLENCE IN POPULAR CULTURE AND LITERATURE ...... 7

1.1. DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE ...... 7

1.2. VIOLENCE AND PLEASURE ...... 9

2. CHUCK PALAHNIUK AND VIOLENCE ...... 11

3. PALAHNIUK’S WRITING ...... 13

3.1. ...... 16

4. ANALYSES OF PALAHNIUK’S WITH A FOCUS ON THE ELEMENTS OF VIOLENCE ...... 18

4.1. VIOLENCE AGAINST HUMANS AND SOCIETY...... 22 4.1.1. ...... 22 4.1.2. ...... 25 4.1.3. ...... 26

4.2. VIOLENCE AGAINST ONESELF ...... 28 4.2.1. Fight Club ...... 28 4.2.2. Choke ...... 30 4.2.3. Pygmy ...... 31

4.3. SEXUAL VIOLENCE ...... 32 4.3.1. Fight Club ...... 32 4.3.2. Choke ...... 35 4.3.3. Pygmy ...... 37

CONCLUSION ...... 40

WORKS CITED ...... 41

4 Introduction

Chuck Palahniuk is becoming increasingly popular every day. This is mainly due to his debut Fight Club and especially due to who transformed the into a successful film. There are still people who have never heard of Chuck Palahniuk, but it is not easy, especially between young generations, to find those who do not know Fight Club. There is a whole around Palahniuk and his work. People quote passages from his novels and establish organizations similar to Project Mayhem or just get inspired by his characters. In the documentary Postcards from the Future Palahniuk tells a story about some man in Florida who walks around and pretends he‟s choking around beautiful women and forces them to Heimlich him and then weeps and says he wants to stay in touch with them and shows them pictures of his family and such.

One of the reasons why Palahniuk‟s novels are so popular is the topics of his novels. There is sex, violence and also underdogs with who people can identify and there are also all sorts of happy endings for these underdogs.

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 people. Then through the analysis of three Palahniuk‟s novels, I will find and compare different types of violence that can be found there.

The thesis consists of two parts. First is theoretical and the other consists of an analysis. In the first chapter I will provide a definition of violence, take a

5 look at it from the psychological point of view and try to give some reasons why violence is currently so popular.

In the second chapter some events from Palahniuk‟s life will be presented. Mostly these will be violent events that have an influence on his writing.

In the third chapter I will take a look at Palahniuk‟s style of writing, his inspirations and research methods and provide a characteristic of a genre called

Transgressive fiction.

In the second part of the thesis, there will be analyses of Palahniuk‟s novels, especially Fight Club, Choke and Pygmy. This part will be divided into three parts according to types of violence in the novels. Those will be Violence against society, Violence against oneself and Sexual violence. In the analytical parts examples will be given from each of the three novels.

6 1. Violence in popular culture and literature

1.1. Definition of violence

Patrick W. Shaw, in his work The Modern American Novel of Violence, writes about violence as “an act by one human being that causes pain and injury to another human being. While this is a reliable core definition, the word

'injury' itself needs to be further explained. 'Injury' is a wound that shows up as physical, pragmatic evidence: bruises, blood, cuts, abrasions, contusions.

'Injury' is the kind of hurt a medical doctor can treat or that a qualified pathologist can point to and say 'that's what killed this person.' Assuming the validity of this modified and specific meaning of 'injury', therefore, I define violence as any action, premeditated or not, that is performed with the purpose of injuring or killing another living creature, especially another human” (2).

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” (The Anatomy of Human

Destructiveness 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” (24). Humans rarely have the need to use violence in a defensive way and if so, it is mostly because of other human behave in an aggressive and destructive way. “Man differs from the animal by the fact that

7 he is a killer; he is the only primate that kills and tortures members of his own species without any reason, either biological or economics, and who feels satisfaction of doing so” (25). Even though most humans do not have the need to practice violence directly, there is still lot of people who enjoy at least watching violence or reading about it in newspapers or literature.

In the course of history “The problem of violence has occupied a key position in modern Western thought. It has now, however, acquired unprecedented centrality, as America‟s arrival to self-awareness as a potential victim of public, visible, televised violence has imposed renewed scrutiny upon the paradigms under which the topic had been examined. Debates about legal or illegal, legitimate or illegitimate, just or unjust, 'real' or 'symbolic' forms of violence have been revived, with positions, as rule, being now more entrenched than ever” (The Letter of Violence 1).

There is no doubt that today‟s popular culture is violent. There is violence in the movies, literature and video games. Not all of them are accepted positively and by everyone, but some people just never seem to have enough.

The explanation for that, according to John Fiske is: “Represented violence is popular because it offers points of relevance to people living in societies where the power and resources are inequitably distributed and structured around lines of conflicting interests. Violence on television is a concrete representation of class (or other) in society. The heroes 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” (Understanding

8 Popular Culture 134 – 135). This practically means that the more attractive, young and average the character of the novel or the film is, the better the chances are that he is going to survive to the end of the story. Villains on the other hand are often physically and almost always mentally disadvantaged in some way.

Films and literature are the mirror 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 experiences. “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” (Understanding Popular Culture

136).

According to Fiske violence is an element especially of masculine popular cultures. It is likely, that most of Palahniuk‟s most violent characters are men.

Although it can not be said that Palahniuk‟s women are helpless victims, they can act violently, but still retain their femininity. Also women‟s violence in

Palahniuk‟s novels is more about psychological aggression than about fighting or shooting.

1.2. 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. Minárik explains Fiske‟s

9 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, even despite considerable liberating effects of sexual revolution in past several decades”

(Writing of Chuck Palahniuk – development and popular aspects 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”

(Understanding Popular Culture 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 using the violence. 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 (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) (The Fiction of Self-destruction 20 – 21).

10 2. Chuck Palahniuk and violence

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.

In 1999 Chuck‟s father was murdered by a jealous ex boyfriend of a woman he met through a personal ad and dated. Dale Shackleford 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, Shackleford 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. Eventually,

Chuck voted for the death sentence. Palahniuk 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 and adult Palahniuk also became a member of , which is a rebellious organization that specializes in performing various pranks

11 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.

12 3. Palahniuk’s writing

“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”

(The Fiction of Self-destruction 3). This is the description of Palahniuk‟s writing by Jose Kavadlo. And it is probably the best description that could anybody provide. Chuck Palahniuk is one of the best selling authors. He is the author that made read even the people who usually do not. And the reason for that is exactly that feeling that he can evoke with his novels. Palahniuk creates unlovable, sick broken characters ands 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” (The Independent – 2012). Palahniuk takes his job of

13 a writer very seriously in the first interview Daniel Robert Epstein he 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” (SuicideGirls – Jan 2012).

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” (Stranger than Fiction xv). This statement is intended for readers who “haven‟t already noticed”, because sometimes, it can be difficult to notice that in Palahniuk‟s novels. The obvious topics are sex and sexual identity, violence, consumer society, self-destructive characters who mostly live at the edge of society, but a theme of love is a little bit hidden.

Chuck writes about his process of writing in his non-fiction work Stranger than Fiction. His favorite part of writing is a research. Before he started to write a Fight Club, worked Palahniuk 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 (xviii).

14 When he was writing , 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” (xix). Some stories people made-up some were true. Palahniuk takes the best of them and uses it 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” (xx).

Chuck does not get the ideas for his novels only thanks to his own research but also from his own and his friends‟ lives. When he was stuck in his writing he did throw out a topic of conversation and people reacted to it and came with 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 , 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 guests told theirs stories. And within

one evening, I had enough for a book (xxi).

As he says in the document Postcards from the Future, there are people who already do the thing he writes about. The other thing is nobody knows about them.

15 3.1. 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 fulfil the specifications of this genre.

However, there are still people who don‟t 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 with 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 transgression fiction as the term “transgressive” with the idea of “nice”.

Despite this opinion there is still a certain amount of people who consider Palahniuk to be a representative of transgression literature and there are definitely reasons for that. In his books Palahniuk regularly portrays people who stand on the edge of the society. They are usually people who commit

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.

16 petty crimes mostly in 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 in Fight

Club. Palahniuk‟s characters are underdogs and as such they perfectly fit into the transgressive fiction genre.

17 4. Analyses of Palahniuk’s novels with a focus on the elements of violence

In all of Palahniuk‟s works there can be found some elements of violence in various forms. They can be divided into three categories: violence against humans and society, violence against oneself and sexual violence. In this work there will be closely analyzed only three of Palahniuk‟s books (Fight Club, 1996;

Choke, 2001; Pygmy, 2009), but there are other novels that are also worth mentioning on this matter.

Second published novel Survivor (1999) tells the story of one of the last members of a suicidal cult who pretends to be some kind of hotline counselor and encourages people who call him to kill themselves. Eventually, he becomes an icon of mainstream culture and . In the end he desperately hijacks a plane and fakes his own death.

In the same year as Survivor were published Invisible monsters. This was actually the first novel written by Palahniuk, but publisher rejected it because it was too disturbing. The novel describes a life of a former fashion model that lost a large part of her face in a shooting accident. Eventually, the reader learns that she shot herself to stop being beautiful. The whole story of

Invisible monsters is very complicated, emotional and involves stealing and using drugs (even unknowingly), shooting and burning houses.

In the interview with Daniel Robert Epstein he described Palahniuk

Lullaby as one of “Sort of three books dedication to reinventing horror”

(SuicideGirls – Jan 2012). This category would also include his next two novels

Diary (2003) and Haunted. Lullaby (published in 2002) was closely connected

18 with Palahniuk personal life. He started to work on this novel during the trial with his father‟s murderer. Chuck was supposed to participate on the decision if

Dale Shackleford should be sentenced to death and he struggled a lot with this decision. Lullaby is really about a lullaby in an African children‟s book. Several children mysteriously die after their parents read them this lullaby and a newspaper reporter is writing an article about this sudden infant death syndrome. After he discovers the powers of the poem, he unintentionally kills lots of people by just remembering it. With some help he decides to destroy every copy of this book so it can not do more harm. Shortly after Lullaby was published Shackleford was sentenced to death.

Haunted (2005) is a novel composed from 23 short stories that are all connected with one frame story. Seventeen writers decide to participate in a secret writers' retreat where they are locked by the house owner and forced to write their life work. Those stories which are told by imprisoned writers as well as the house-owner are their life stories and are mostly about death, murders, sexual deviance, and desperation. Eventually the writers start to kill each other and also hurt themselves in purpose to be famous after they will be found.

Little more specific is a novel 2 (2008) which is about former porn queen who decides to finish her career by breaking the world record and she wants to make a movie where she has sexual intercourse with 600 men. There is high probability that she dies during this performance. In this novel the combination of sex and violence is most obvious.

2 A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the real murder of a person without special effect. In this case the term is connected with porn industry.

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

Fincher into a very successful film. 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 unnamed narrator. Some readers assume that his name his Joe3 (in the film the name is replaced with Jack) because of his statements like “I am Joe‟s Broken Heart...” (Fight Club 134).

Those come from the old magazines where people‟s organs talked about themselves in the first person. Joe suffers with insomnia. He starts to visits several support groups (for people with cancer, brain parasites etc.) which help him to fall asleep. He meets in these groups Marla Singer who falls in love with him. In the second interview by Daniel Robert Epstein, Palahniuk asked 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” (Suicidegirls – Oct 2012). At the beginning of the novel appears also Tyler Durden who can be considered protagonist of 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 others projects, that will be mentioned in the following chapters.

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

Mancini and his friend Denny. They are both sex addict and participate in twelve steps program in which is Victor not very successful. Victor works as a historical interpreter at a theme park. An important part of Victor‟s life is his

3 For the purposes of this paper the narrator will be used designation “Joe”.

20 mother Ida who is currently in the nursing home and most of the time does not even know who Victor is. When Victor was young she did not raise him and he grew up in a 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 a Jesus‟ foreskin; therefore he is a son of a

Jesus. Victor‟s behavior from that moment consists of actions which “would

Jesus not do”.

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 is writing notes about the

American lifestyle, system of education and religious believes. He is disgusted with everyone except from his host sister to who he has feeling. Pygmy is, as well as the other agents who came to the United States, well trained in the 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, because he decides that he wants to stay in America with his new family. Christopher Tyler wrote in his review for The Guardian:

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”.

21

Palahniuk's satirical scheme involves a cartoonishly imagined America

being seen through the eyes of a hostile visitor from a cartoonishly

imagined totalitarian state. 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. Agent 67 writes awkwardly but with feeling

about the sadness of malls, but begins to sense that he could make a

new life there despite the 'filthy reek American cash money' (The

Guardian – 2009).

4.1. Violence against humans and society

4.1.1. Fight Club

Fight club 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 had its purpose in a fight against society. There are several reasons why men participate in fights. One of them is a need to hurt oneself (more in chapter 4.2.1). Joe did not only want to destroy himself but also felt the need to destroy beautiful things around him. One night he tags a very beautiful

22 young boy for a fight and beats him completely. Tyler asks him then, what was he really fighting and he responses:

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).

A common reason for fighting is that men who fight in the club are mostly fighting someone completely else than the person opposite to them. They are fighting their fathers, their bosses or whoever the hate. The conversation between Tyler and Joe after their first fight: “Lying on our back in the parking lot, staring up at the one star that came through the streetlights, I asked Tyler what he‟d been fighting. Tyler said, his father. […] There‟s nothing personal about who you fight in fight club. You fight to fight” (53 – 54). 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).

Besides their day jobs, Tyler and Joe work as waiters in a luxury restaurant, where they pollute a food that rich people eat. Tyler also works as a projectionist in a movie theatre where he adds pictures with pornography into

23 family movies – “Tyler spliced penis into everything after that. Usually, close- ups, or a Grand Canyon vagina with an echo, four stories tall and twitching with blood pressure as Cinderella danced with her Prince Charming and people watched. 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). 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 included about seventy men who represented some kind of army. It contained four committees which met on a different night: “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. They have weekly homework assignments to accomplish, e.g. to burn houses, started fights with passersby or pointed 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 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 (The Fiction of Self- destruction 18). Project Mayhem is more and more destructive and violent.

When there is someone against them, they threaten him with cutting his testicles or they simply kill the man.

24 Being part of the Project Mayhem means loosing your identity, you become a soldier working for Tyler and only after you die, you can have your name back. Men in the project are referred to as Space Monkeys. Every member of the Project has to have five hundred dollars in his shoe for his burial.

Both 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 – 2009).

4.1.2. Choke

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

Violence against society in Choke includes small crimes like switching hair colours in local store (Choke 65), shaking chicken eggs (leading to birth of deformed chickens) (122), or more significant – Victors mother 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. As an act of violence can be seen so called “granny dumping” (57) which means leaving the old parents on the side of the street (like some people do with unwanted pets), where they are found and taken care of by nursing home.

25 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 acted choking (more in chapter 4.2.2.) “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.

Second, and more significant, is unintentional murdering of Victor‟s mother. With good intentions, Victor is feeding his sick mother, but he overdoes it and she is not able to swallow the amount of pudding he gives her. After all

Victor‟s pretended choking is Ida‟s death very symbolic and is described in 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. This is how

I must look choking in public (269 – 270).

4.1.3. Pygmy

The main storyline of the novel is Operation Havoc. A goal of this operation, similar to Project Mayhem, is destroying United States. To this purpose, several well-trained agents are sent to America to learn its culture and

26 the best way of devastating it. Protagonist of the novel – Pygmy has very negative relationship against United States and his host family “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”

(Pygmy 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

United Nations. Trevor manage to shoot several of his schoolmates “head of delegate Sri Lanka explode. Second muzzle flash, head of delegate blond cornrows Zaire explode” (89), before Pygmy intervenes (he obviously has no interest in saving American‟s lives).

Another one of operatives, Magda, attacks local pastor 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).

In his memories from home country, describes Pygmy training of 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 also forced to vote if some rodent will be killed and yes is the only acceptable answer. 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. Into this scene, enters their instructor 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

27 now, Pavel smiling head explode. […] For official record, announce instructor, the state requires no epic hero” (68 – 69). In the next moment, agent Boban is also shot for being useless.

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 parade operative‟s parents try to contact him, they are instantly killed right in the middle of the crowd.

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

4.2. Violence against oneself

4.2.1. Fight Club

As was 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, I say. It‟s nothing any more to have a beautiful stock body” (Fight Club 48). The relationship between Tyler and Joe can be seen as sadomasochistic but as Kavadlo points in his essay on Fight Club “Two sides to a split personality, the narrator and Tyler turn their acts of sadomasochism into

28 masochism alone […] what the narrator has been fighting, literally and figuratively, is himself” (Kavadlo 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 that the two of them are the same person and therefore Joe was hurting himself the whole time. Even before 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” (Fight Club 26). When he starts fighting in fight club 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). 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 although suicidal can be actually seen as a murder: “I‟m not killing myself, I yell. I‟m killing Tyler” (205).

Joe is not the only person in the novel, who hurts himself. Marla also has very negative attitude towards her own existence. “'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 taken too many Xanax” (59). Marla‟s

“dying” is seen as very casual thing. She invites Joe to watch her and when he denies because he already has other plans, her response is very

29 disproportionate “That‟s okay, Marla said, she could die just as well watching television. Marla just hoped there was something worth watching” (59).

Participants of the Project Mayhem also behave in a self-destructive manner. They not only risk their lives (or at least freedom) it the assignments, they even burning off their own fingerprints with the lye so if arrested, no one could identify them.

There is also no way someone could get away from the organization once he is in. Joe wants out, they will not let him. 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).

Self-harm makes up a large part of the Fight Club in various ways, but the most obvious is definitely the fight club alone. Self-violence in Fight Club serves mainly as an instrument of getting rid of the frustrations of life.

4.2.2. Choke

The beginning of Victor‟s choking was in his childhood. His mother was a drug addict and was not a very good mother. One day, when eating corn dog, he started to choke. After his mother helped 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 his choking just to get his saviors money; he also does it for that feeling of being loved that he is missing his whole life. The choking is obviously very painful and unpleasant, but Victor does not seem to have problem with

30 pain. When he has his bowels blocked by anal beads, he refuses to see a doctor although he is in a great pain. It is a moment, when he believes he is a son of a

Jesus and when Jesus could suffer, so can he. When is he taken to the police station for an interrogation, his bowels are still blocked. When police are questioning him Victor tries his choking trick for the last time:

I look around for anything larger. Something too large to swallow. […]

And I slip the cap from the bottle of ketchup into my mouth. And I

swallow. In the instant, my legs snap straight so fast my chair flies over

behind me. My hands go to gripping around my throat. I‟m on my feet

and gaping at the painted ceiling, my eyes rolled back. My chin

stretches out away from my face (280 – 281).

This time Victor 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). Finally one of the policemen help him and when he is pressing Victor‟s abdomen, his bowels finally release and everything comes out of him right at the police station – “My entire private life made public” (287).

4.2.3. Pygmy

Violence in Pygmy is mostly against the other humans than against oneself. Nevertheless, it is possible to find some elements of self-violence in

31 this novel. After Trevor has been raped by Pygmy (more in chapter 4.3.3.), he starts to suffer with Stockholm syndrome and believes he is in love with Pygmy.

He confesses his love to him 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'” (Pygmy 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 and other students want him to hurt them so they can delay the 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).

4.3. Sexual violence

4.3.1. Fight Club

In Palahniuk‟s novels, love and sex are very often connected with violence or even with death. In the Fight Club, narrator visits support groups for people with various diseases. In one of which, he meets a girl whose only concern is not that she is dying but the lack of sexuality in 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). Love is a

32 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.” […] “My characters are still playing in a very classic sort of boy- gets-girl scenario, or girl-gets-boy scenario” (Alternet – 2001).

These features can be actually seen in all his novels, including Fight

Club. 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” (Fight Club 14). When Joe meets Marla, he does not like her very much, but when he sees Marla dating Tyler, he is jealous:

“Tyler and Marla, they were up almost all night in the room next to mine. […]

Tyler asks, is this a problem for me? […] No, I say, it‟s fine. Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains. Just great, I say. Really” (62).

It is not clear if Joe is jealous of Tyler or of Marla. Joe has very close relationship with Tyler. He admires him and in some way maybe even loves him. There even exist some theories that Fight Club contains indications of homosexuality or homoerotism. Robert Alan Brook and Robert Westerfelhaus published a study on the topic: Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain View: The Fight

Club DVD as Digital Closet. It might be important to say that the study was published before Palahniuk came out. The title clearly refers to the film version where apparently were highlighted some moments between Joe and Tyler.

These would be the opening scene of the film, where is Tyler holding gun in

33 Joe‟s (in the film Jack‟s) mouth. According to some critics (for example Andrew

O‟Hehir) the gun clearly presents man‟s phallus. Director David Finch refuses this theory. According to him is the relationship between Joe and Tyler not sexual. (Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain View: The Fight Club DVD as Digital

Closet 27). Joe is devoted to Tyler, he looks up to him and wants to please him.

““I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve.

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” (Fight Club 174). In the end it is only up to readers and viewers. They will see what they want to. Because Palahniuk does not enforces the one and only true. He shows people something and let them see their version.

Sexual relationship between Tyler and Marla is very rough, there is no love included. “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). Even when there are finally some feelings revealed in the novel, the biggest declarations of affections is Joe‟s “I think I like you” (197) and

Marla‟s “It‟s not love or anything…but I think I like you, too” (205).

Fight Club definitely contains lots of affection, but to find it, it is necessary to look behind the violence and damaged personalities that are obvious at the first sight.

34 4.3.2. Choke

Sexuality is a significant element in Choke. Both main characters are sex addicts and participate in twelve-step program. At their meetings members are sharing there 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” (Alternet – 2001). For sexual addicts, sex is like a drug, they are able to do anything to be satisfied and their deeds often lead to injury:

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” (Choke 10 – 11).

Characters in Choke do not consider sex to be part of love or relationship. For

Victor love and sex are mutually exclusive. When he starts some kind of relationship with Paige, he is not able to have sex with her and his reason is:

“You want to know the reason why I won‟t fuck you? […] Maybe the truth is I

35 really want to like you instead” (166). Sex is only an instrument of pleasure and is often connected with violence. Victor meets a girl Gwen whose fantasy is to be raped and they arrange a fake rape in her house. Whole situation is rather comical, because the conditions of rape are specified in advance and from the features of 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 he was him and apologies 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 rapes. “'Oh, her,'

I say, 'I thought you meant this other rape'” (274). This is one of the many comical situations in the novel. Victor is then taken to the station for an interrogation.

Despite predominantly sexual nature of the novel, Choke contains some love due to relationship between Victor and Paige and even Denny and the stripper. Palahniuk himself “is adamant that Choke is a romantic comedy and even that out of 'our cynical, sarcastic, ironic time' will come 'the most romantic time we've ever witnessed'. In his defense, he argued that he believes it is impossible to write novels that address romance without irony and cynicism”

(“Alternet interview – 2001”).

36 4.3.3. Pygmy

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 see sex as a source of pleasure. Even the young students behave in a very sexual manner. Pygmy tells his host brother that he heard

“how in America told all ladies glad liberated to always expose many fragrant vaginas. No ever possess maidenhead. Develop hobby of many frequent abortion. Always hungering to fashion moist lady mouths tight gentlemen genital” (Pygmy 15). This is how the Americans are viewed by Pygmy‟s home country. The host mother spends all of her leisure time masturbating with her friends “'Mom‟s throwing one of her fukkerware parties. […] It used to be her and her friends would force each other to buy these plastic boxes for leftover food. Now they sit around test-driving vibrators'” (33).

Pygmy and other agents are taught to perceive sex as an instrument. In one way as a weapon, at the age of eight, they receive some kind of sexual education where they are told that all Americans are pervert “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). Pygmy uses sex as a weapon when he is assaulted by Trevor

(who also bullies his host brother). He attacks him in a mall bathroom and

37 rapes him. The rape scene is and described in detail and 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).

Ironically the rape leads to the fact that Trevor falls in love with Pygmy and later to Trevor‟s death (see chapter 4.2.3.).

The other way of perceiving sex by operatives is an instrument for reproduction. It is an obligation. The first phase of Operation Havoc is for boys to impregnate American girls. “'Operative Chernok by current now seeded often

38 several American female.' Say, 'Operative Mang planted embryo own host mother.' Magda insist phase first must soon complete. Say, 'Comrade, seeded you own host sister'” (48). Unfortunately for operatives, American girls do not stay pregnant for a very long time. Every time someone succeeds, the girl has an abortion. Pygmy is attracted to his sister and he also develops some feelings for her so he does not see the intercourse with her just as an act of obligation.

For others, sex is just another maneuver: “Magda whisper, hot breathing at ear, 'Must quick, Pumping Rabbit Maneuver, squirt-squirt, plant seed into her'”

(49).

When Trevor begs Pygmy to “go steady” he rejects because “cannot waste more seed within Trevor anus. Must retain so impregnate future offspring. Say, 'Is no personal'” (61). For operatives sex is never personal.

Besides the mission of insemination of American women, all operatives have assigned a breeding partner from their own country:

For official record, operative Magda sole state designate reproductive

coagent operative me. Forever permanent. Extensive chromosome test

establish best premium coagent, assigned from birth, only Magda egg

to fertilize. Agent 36 egg apportioned legal property solely operative me

copulate. Atop vagina of that operative, noble best duty must lifetime

fornicate (25).

39 Conclusion

In the thesis I offered a closer look on the topic of violence in Palahniuk‟s novels. In the theoretical part I have dealt with the occurrence of the violence in current popular culture and the reasons why theme of violence is so attractive for the audience.

In the second chapter I outlined the personality of Chuck Palahniuk, especially the events in his life that had an influence on his writing and his writing techniques. I also characterized the genre of transgressive fiction which is a genre Palahniuk is often connected with.

In the analytical part I described a little Palahniuk‟s novels to shoe their common elements of violence. Then in deeper analyses I took a look at three

Palahniuk‟s novels from different times and in chapters divided according to types of violence. I analyzed the novels and demonstrated various kinds of violence on the examples from the novels. I gave a proof that Palahniuk‟s novels have a common element which is violence – in at least three different forms.

40 Works cited

Primary sources:

Palahniuk, Chuck. Choke. London: Vintage, 2010. Print.

---. Fight Club. London: Vintage, 2003. Print.

---. Pygmy. London: Vintage, 2003. Print.

Secondary sources – Print:

Avelar, Idelber. The Letter of Violence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Print.

Fiske, John. Understanding the Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1997.

Print.

From, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Harmondsworth:

Penguin Books, 1977. Print.

Minárik, Michal. "Chuck Palahniuk – development and popular aspects." MA

thesis. Masaryk University, 2011. Print.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Haunted. London: Vintage, 2006. Print.

---. Stranger than Fiction: True Stories. New York: Anchor Books, 2004.

Print.

---. Invisible Monsters. London: Vintage, 2000. Print.

---. Lullaby. New York: Anchor Books , 2003. Print.

---. Survivor. London: Vintage, 2000. Print.

41 Postcards from the Future: The Chuck Palahniuk Documentary. Dir. Joshua

Chaplinsky, Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer. ChuckPalahniuk.net, 2003.

DVD.

Shaw, Patrick W. The Modern American Novel of Violence. New York:

Whitston, 2000. Print.

Secondary sources – Electronic:

Brook, Robert Alan and Robert Westerfelhaus. “Hiding Homoeroticism in

Plain View: The Fight Club DVD as Digital Closet,” Critical Studies in

Media Communication, vol. 19 no. 1, March 2002, 21 – 43.

Chaplinsky, Joshua. “Strange But True: A Short Biography of Chuck

Palahniuk.” Chuckpalahniuk.net. The Cult. n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.

Kavadlo, Jose. "The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet

Moralist." Stirrings Still: The International Journal of Existential

Literature 2:2 (2005): Web. 30 Oct. 2012.

Dutriou, Megan. “Genre School: Transgressive Fiction”. www.mahala.co.za.

Mahala | Music, Culture, Reality | Magazine. 25. Jan. 2011. Web 30

Oct. 2012.

Palahniuk, Chuck. “Chuck Palahniuk.” Interview by Daniel Robert Epstein.

SuicideGirls.com. SuicideGirls. 1 Jan. 2003. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.

---. “Chuck Palahniuk 2.” Interview by Daniel Robert Epstein.

SuicideGirls.com. SuicideGirls. 1 Oct. 2003. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.

42 ---. „Chuck Palahniuk: 'I shy away from non-consensual violence'.” Interview

by Arifa Akbar. Independent.co.uk. The Independent. 16 June

2012. Web. 1 Nov. 2012.

Prjctmayhem.wordpress.com. Project Mayhem. 1 Dec 2009. Web. 1 Nov.

2012.

The Unexpected Romantic: An Interview with Chuck Palahniuk. Interview by

Tamara Straus. Alternet.org. Alternet. June 18 2001. Web. 30 Oct.

2012.

Tayler, Christopher. “Review: Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk”. Guardian.co.uk.

The Guardian. 13 June 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.

The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website. A Writer‟s Cult, LLC, 1999 –

2011. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.

43 Resumé (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 zabývá 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, s rozdělením na kapitoly podle typu násilí. Jedná se o kapitoly: Násilí vůči lidem a společnosti, Násilí vůči vlastní osobě a Sexuální násilí. V těchto kapitolách je na příkladech ukázán a srovnán výskyt těchto prvků v jednotlivých románech.

44 Resumé (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 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. This part is divided into three parts according to different types of violence. These chapters are:

Violence against humans and society, Violence against oneself and Sexual violence. This chapter consists of demonstrated examples and an occurrence of these elements in individual novels.

45