Free Choice #2 - Novel Analysis

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

"The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
The third rule of fight club is two men per fight.
The fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time.
The fifth rule of fight club is no shoes, no shirts in the fight.
The sixth rule of fight club is the fights go on as long as they have to.
The seventh rule is if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight." (pg. 50)

An apartment full of Ikea furnishings, a refrigerator full of condiments and no food. A crappy job. Tyler Durden. His world was boring. His life wasn't being lived. He went to support group meetings for fun, and suffered from insomnia. Then he met Tyler. He comes home from a business trip to find his apartment blown up. His windows were all blown out, his Ikea home collections and condiments were all over the pavement in front of the building. The only person he could think to call was Tyler. Tyler was everything he wanted to be and more. His life turned around when he moved in with Tyler. They started a fight club together, worked small night jobs together, then everything begins to escalate. The fight club begins to get bigger, with more people each and every week. The first two rules had been broken. What starts off as something a bunch of drunk guys did for fun quickly escalated to Project Mayhem, a group solely dedicated to causing damage and chaos around the city. He is sitting in a chair with the barrel of a gun in his mouth and Tyler is saying "the first step to eternal life is you have to die" (pg. 1).

This is one of my favorite books, and Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors. This novel is eventful, exciting, and makes you not want to put it down to see what happens. Chuck Palahniuk's writing is so different and distinct, that there really is no way to describe it. He likes to jump around. None of the chapters flow with each other, and every now and then it jumps to the past to expain something that is about to happen. When you're reading this novel it may seem hard to follow at first, but once you finish it, it all comes together, just like any other novel he has written. The movie does a good job of following the book, but like many, the book is just so much better.