Odyssean aspects in Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club chronicles the hope of homecoming in a fantastic world of violence and uncanny illusion. It is tale insane and unbelievable, which nevertheless has a concreteness and reality to it which captivates and convinces. It is here, in this absurd mix of the everyday and the bizarre, of phantasmal illusions and very real wounds, that one finds its universal themes. These aspects mark its kinship with Homer’s Odyssey. This comes, of course, as no surprise. For the Odyssey itself is for us the prototype of all adventure stories; it is moreover the story of identity par excellence. With an open imagination then, we will be able to find Homer’s story in Palahniuk’s. Here are tales of battle and masculinity. Here we find a fantastic journey home, filled with erotic temptations and divine frustrations.
Masculinity and Violence
The first vital link between the Odyssey and Fight Club is, paradoxically, the great divide which separates them. It is a divide of values and cultures; it is a divide between men and boys. It is this gap, this absence, which compels Fight Club’s characters. “We have no great war,” declares a disgusted Tyler Durden. He asks a blunt question, out of place for a decadent and technocratic time and age: “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” These are awkward questions of desperation. These are questions of a culture violently sundered from its heritage by an apathetic embrace of non-violence (or, more precisely, the “off-shoring” of violence – the late heritage of professional soldiery and digital fantasies). Homer’s age stands in distinct contrast. For Homer, a man’s reputation is not made by the mere acquisition of wealth and property (though indeed these were marks great men), but the battles waged by each man which justified his acquisitions. A man’s κλέος, his renown, was found in strength of shield and spear. Western man’s avoidance of this conflict produces the pathetic and self-mocking tone Fight Club’s unnamed Narrator takes while examining his life: Ikea catalogues, a decent wardrobe, a respectable job…and no real Life. The real quest of the film’s men, even in their ignorance, are the faraway fields of Ilion and the unexpected gift of Life found only in embrace of Death. Finding his concrete battlefield and the age-old heritage of violence reborn in a basement, the Narrator confesses: “You weren’t alive anywhere like you were there.”
A Strange Journey Home
Through the course of the film it becomes clear that our unnamed Narrator is engaged in a most bizarre and dangerous journey home. His home of course, is his identity. His journey is filled with fantastic images, the wily feminine, and much sorrow. For the unnamed Narrator too is a “Nobody”. This name (or lack thereof) links him with Odysseus’ crafty twist on his own name in the cave of the Cyclops. Both confess a lack of selfhood. Odysseus, his name so easily morphed both into “Nobody” (οὐδείς), and “To Sorrow” (ὀδύσσομαι), is a man losing his very self inasmuch as he has lost his home. His struggles to return are a purgatory of unbelievable challenges and mythical foes. The Narrator’s desire to die on one of his many meaningless airplane journeys reminds us of Odysseus’ confessions that it would have been better for him to have fallen on the fields of Troy than to be constantly batted about a world away from his true home. The Narrator’s “tour” of weeping reminds us of Odysseus’ many tears, always “eating out the heart” within him. Yet there is a deeper connection, a more ambiguous turn. For the Narrator, inasmuch he realizes that he is not himself and that he is not home, is also in some way greatly enlivened by and attracted to the strange world that he has found himself in. Tyler Durden is not the whole truth about him, yet he is some part of the truth about him. His “other” world is a world dangerous and strange, to be sure, but it is also a world of strength and eroticism, a world of vitality. In like manner Odysseus’ journey is one of the temptations of “the other”. For he is a glorious man in Circe’s bed and a man with the hope of divine life on Kalypso’s island. The latter, indeed, is Odysseus’ great challenge: should he stay and remain with the other, embracing even immortality? Or should he return home and remain a mere mortal? The choice between two lives and the lies and truths which both lives contain is one perpetually present to in both stories.
A Cast of Homeric Characters
In this existential journey home, the film’s Narrator is not alone. His companions play key roles in his decisions, each taking on a role (or roles) which remind us of the Odyssean nature of his travels. In many ways, Tyler himself is the craftiness and cunning of Odysseus. He brings out of our Narrator’s psyche the wiliness needed to survive and grow in a bizarre and dangerous world. Yet Tyler Durden is also an Athena figure, mentoring the Narrator much as the grey-eyed goddess did Telemachos. For Tyler teaches the Narrator what it takes to be man. Tyler teaches the Narrator how to become Odysseus, how to find his father, who is symbolically his true life and masculinity.
Marla, the only important female character throughout Fight Club, plays multiple roles as well. She is in some part the Narrator’s Poseidon. She is the wrathful foil, interrupting the Narrator’s attempts at wholeness and homecoming. Her presence in the Narrator’s self-help groups is one of spite. She is keeping the Narrator from returning home. Yet she is more than this. She represents, in light of our comparison, all the feminine dangers that Odysseus and our Narrator are forced to face. Here she is the ugly feminine: she is a vile and disgusting Harpie (portrayed multiple times in her own drug-riddled filth, we are reminded with Marla of the disgust with which Homer describes these foul flying creatures). She is a Siren too. Mara’s beauty and charm are irresistible, hiding at first glance the utter destructiveness which the feminine can bring. In this destructiveness she is the film’s Scylla and Charybdis: feminine monstrosities which, despite a hero’s best effort, cannot be avoided. In the end, however, Mara is the Narrator’s Penelope. She is his home and life and his hope for some sort of normalcy.
Themes which cannot die
Chuck Palahniuk’s film embraces and transforms themes key not just to Classical literature, but to all subsequent Western literature itself. His is the story of a hero who does not know who he is, but who through great challenges must find himself and discover again a home. His journeys are filled with the fantastic and the horrific. His struggles are as much about his own identity as they are about the world around him. Homer’s story of Odysseus’ homecoming is a story of self-identity, both for the wandering father Odysseus and the wary son, Telemachos. It is a story of the importance of combat, the necessity of comradery and the dangers and attractions of the feminine. These things are, so to speak, invincible and ever-present in all subsequent Western literature. Fight Club is no exception, re-telling these ancient stories and re-threading them, twisting and molding them to produce a thoroughly modern epic of identity.
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