Animal Farm.... Oh, wait this was Fight Club

Fight Club is a wonderful film, probably the best film we could watch to bring this course to a close. It reminded me quite a bit of the novel Animal Farm. Mainly because slowly but surely the fight club was becoming an organization similar to the farm that Napoleon was creating in the novel. The people bleated Napoleon’s message without thinking or questioning, just performing. An example of this is when the narrator‘s, the character played by Edward Norton, friend, Robert Paulson, is killed doing work for Project Mayhem. The narrator tells everyone that his friend wasn’t just a person giving himself up for the overall cause, but that he had a name, history, and life. He was a person that deserved more respect than the work they were doing allowed him. Consequently when he says his name, Robert Paulson, the people act as though they understand the situation but really they understand nothing, and are only able to repeat what they have been told, bleating incessantly like Napoleon’s sheep.

To me the movie represented two very different things. The first point it made was that you shouldn’t let anything hold you back. Every person should be true to themselves no matter what the circumstances may be, there is no reason to live life as a group rather than as an individual. The narrator learned this lesson the hard way. His body subconsciously morphed him into the person he wanted to become in order to pursue a more fulfilling life as compared to the standard complacency his life was previously. However at the same time it also says to watch out for things that are overwhelmingly cool or popular. The fight club the narrator invents becomes too popular. His involvement in the club ultimately leads to massive problems that he created for himself. His alter ego, Tyler Durden, becomes a god-like figure to himself. The only way to overcome his predicament was to destroy his alter ego and kill the thing he had come to worship. In the end I think the narrator realized that it doesn’t matter what his life is like so long as he is happy with the way it proceeds. He doesn’t need to be hip or cool in order to have a fulfilling life. All he needed was to be happy with himself

Ultimately Fight Club deals with the idea of breaking away from the normal. Lives are not meant to be trapped. They are supposed to be concrete situations that can be altered by want or necessity of change. Edward Norton’s character effectively demonstrates how one can be unhappy with his or her life and want change. Even more importantly though he shows the stupidity of becoming sucked into some flashy trend, realizing that it is not at all what your life should be, and escaping.