Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is an incredibly engrossing and addictive read. I credit this largely to the author’s wholly original writing style. For a novel that reinforces the concept that human beings are little more than a bunch of banal drones, I must say one need to look no further than this book to find proof that people are capable of original thought. Palahniuk employs a kind of minimalist style to convey his thoughts about the ugliness and triviality of modern day society. His grotesque imagery successfully repulses and attracts his readers; getting them to wince but at the same time getting them face truths about themselves and others that they might usually avoid.
Within the first few lines of the book we are thrust into the mad violence and chaos that is Fight Club: “Tyler gets me a job as waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying the first step to eternal life is having to die” (11). At this point the reader has no frame of reference or context, yet the immediate action all but jumps from the page and grabs us. Character development can wait. What matters now is the gun in our narrator’s mouth. Soon after we realize that the building our characters are standing in will be blown to smithereens in matter of minutes and a tension building countdown ensues. In this way the reader is thrust into the plot with little to no chance of catching our breath.
Another thing that struck me about the story is the rage behind it. The narrator goes from being just another numb, ineffectual person, blindly functioning through the tasks of his daily life, to a fearless, violent madman, hell-bent of self-destruction. Once he realizes the freedom that comes from the total obliteration of everything comfortable, everything familiar, he is addicted to it. To him there is nothing that makes one feel more alive than the destruction of something beautiful. We see this here: “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” (123). Here everything we are taught to care about, taught to want to protect, is turned on its head. The narrator does not want to pursue these things. He wants to tear them down. At this point our narrator is acutely aware of the fact that nothing, no location, no person, no object, can make him feel as alive as fight club and the freedom he has gained since he “lost everything” (70).
The fast-paced, fragmented, and controlled style of Palahniuk tends to contrast with the absolute chaos occurring in his story but it works to his advantage. At times he is vague and then without warning will switch to being meticulously descriptive. Unlike any other I have yet to read the author creates an unconventional kind of balance between the bizarre occurrences of his plot and the straightforward, unflinching way in which he relates these events to us.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Formal Analysis #2: Some final thoughts on Ceremony
One thing that distinguishes Ceremony from most novels I have read in the past is the fact that Silko chooses to use nonlinear storytelling. Without any explanation we are taken from the jungle, to the reservation, to Tayo’s childhood, and various other scenes of past events. In the beginning it was equal parts interesting and confusing but once I had a better understanding of what was happening I came to really appreciate the author’s approach. By playing around with the chronology of the story and shifting back and forth between past and contemporary settings Silko gives the reader a very vivid idea of the horrors Tayo experienced at war and why he is so unstable when he returns.
Silko takes us back into the Tayo’s childhood, where we can clearly see where his insecurities regarding his mixed heritage stem from. The character of Auntie is always there to remind Tayo that he is different; lesser. This distinction is reinforced daily because “she wanted him close enough to feel excluded, to be aware of the distance between them.” (62) These feelings of otherness echo throughout his life and are partially responsible for his crippling depression.
Early in the story the past tense narrative takes us into the sweltering humidity of a Philippine jungle where Tayo is ordered to kill a row of Japanese soldiers. For a reason that is never entirely explained Tayo is unable to bring himself to pull the trigger because within the row he sees his beloved uncle Josiah. After the men are shot down Tayo cannot reconcile the fact that Josiah was not one of them.
He felt the shivering then; it began at the tips of his fingers and pulsed into his arms. He shivered because all the facts, all the reasons made no difference any more; he could hear Rocky’s words, and he could follow the logic of what Rocky said, but he could not feel anything except a swelling in his belly, a great swollen grief that was pushing into his throat. (8)
Though he knows it is a physical impossibility the sensation of watching his uncle die before his eyes sends Tayo into a frantic collapse. Here we see the emotional toll that violence is taking on him and get our first glimpse of the kind of paranormal, mystical aspects of Ceremony. The fact that Silko chooses to share this experience early on in the story is indicative of the fact that the author wants the reader to understand Tayo’s sense of loss early on. The fact that we know virtually nothing about his uncle at this point is incidental because we can see how deeply Tayo is affected by witnessing Josiah’s death, even when he knows (at least from a logical standpoint) that it did not happen.
Aside from this approach to storytelling being compelling I think Silko employed this style to mimic the concept of the past being something that continues to play out in our present lives, becoming an essential part of who we are and shaping our future. Tayo’s story would be nothing if not put into context for the reader, we must know about his past to understand his struggles. There is also the sense that the author believes in history repeating itself and therefore something we can learn a great deal from. Ceremony ends up tying together Tayo’s individual story with the story of all humanity. This kind of disjointed storytelling is not always well executed but Silko does it in such a way that I can’t imagine the story being told successfully in any other way.
Silko takes us back into the Tayo’s childhood, where we can clearly see where his insecurities regarding his mixed heritage stem from. The character of Auntie is always there to remind Tayo that he is different; lesser. This distinction is reinforced daily because “she wanted him close enough to feel excluded, to be aware of the distance between them.” (62) These feelings of otherness echo throughout his life and are partially responsible for his crippling depression.
Early in the story the past tense narrative takes us into the sweltering humidity of a Philippine jungle where Tayo is ordered to kill a row of Japanese soldiers. For a reason that is never entirely explained Tayo is unable to bring himself to pull the trigger because within the row he sees his beloved uncle Josiah. After the men are shot down Tayo cannot reconcile the fact that Josiah was not one of them.
He felt the shivering then; it began at the tips of his fingers and pulsed into his arms. He shivered because all the facts, all the reasons made no difference any more; he could hear Rocky’s words, and he could follow the logic of what Rocky said, but he could not feel anything except a swelling in his belly, a great swollen grief that was pushing into his throat. (8)
Though he knows it is a physical impossibility the sensation of watching his uncle die before his eyes sends Tayo into a frantic collapse. Here we see the emotional toll that violence is taking on him and get our first glimpse of the kind of paranormal, mystical aspects of Ceremony. The fact that Silko chooses to share this experience early on in the story is indicative of the fact that the author wants the reader to understand Tayo’s sense of loss early on. The fact that we know virtually nothing about his uncle at this point is incidental because we can see how deeply Tayo is affected by witnessing Josiah’s death, even when he knows (at least from a logical standpoint) that it did not happen.
Aside from this approach to storytelling being compelling I think Silko employed this style to mimic the concept of the past being something that continues to play out in our present lives, becoming an essential part of who we are and shaping our future. Tayo’s story would be nothing if not put into context for the reader, we must know about his past to understand his struggles. There is also the sense that the author believes in history repeating itself and therefore something we can learn a great deal from. Ceremony ends up tying together Tayo’s individual story with the story of all humanity. This kind of disjointed storytelling is not always well executed but Silko does it in such a way that I can’t imagine the story being told successfully in any other way.
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