The film and the novel reminded me of White Noise<\/u> in their focus on death. This time, the characters were not afraid of it, like Jack and Babette, but need to come close to it by fighting until they can barely cry out for it to stop. By testing their bodies to that extreme, they feel more alive and more prepared for death. The narrator claims he is dying when he cannot sleep, to attempt to have his doctor to take him seriously. His doctor does not give him the attention he needs, so he adopts the persona of someone who is dying by attending the support groups. There, his life is ephemeral and therefore more valuable; he is not taken for granted. The narrator could go to a plethora of support groups for people who are not dying (AA, gamblers anonymous, etc.) but he chooses to connect with people under these false pretences for two years. Even when Tyler has a gun in the narrator’s mouth, he assures him that they “won’t really die,” but will become immortal, become “legend” (1). Marla is obsessed with death too, attempting to kill herself, thinking she may have tumors, and declaring her affection for Tyler in terms of death, by saying she wants to have his abortion. Death is Marla’s way of getting attention, however fleeting, but it will not bring her the same power that it would narrator\/Tyler.<\/p>\n
Going along with the death aspect of Fight Club<\/u> is the treatment of religion. God is a father figure in Western culture, and this God has given up on the middle children of history, according to Tyler, because of their troubled relationships with their fathers: “If you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God” (177). <\/strong>Tyler then becomes a god to the fight club and project mayhem members and therefore thinks of himself and immortal, because he now has the power of all of the fathers of the men. At the end of the novel, God is a doctor in a mental institution, and the narrator has a realistic way of seeing humanity, as not crap, and not special, but just being. He finds the happy medium between the extremes. God doesn’t like his answer, but the narrator does not give this male authority figure ultimate power; instead he concludes, “you can’t teach God anything” (198).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The film and the novel reminded me of White Noise in their focus on death. This time, the characters were not afraid of it, like Jack and Babette, but need to come close to it by fighting until they can barely cry out for it to stop. By testing their bodies to that extreme, they … Continue reading Let’s Talk About Death<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}