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Dualism In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

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Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club, includes timeless themes: even though the novel was written nine years ago, the problems are still relevant. Themes ranged from masculinity to consumerism. The reoccurring theme that stuck out the most to me was the inappropriate ways that the characters dealt with their problems. The narrator and Marla have real life problems that they are unable to deal with, interestingly, the creation of Tyler Durden was a way for the narrator to cope. This supports the notion that the characters use defense mechanisms, such as dissociation, fantasy, denial, and compensation, rather than dealing with their problems directly. This novel easily lends itself towards a humanistic psychological reading, which is heavily …show more content…

The narrator’s denial is linked with his dissociation; he thought of Tyler as a different person so he denied all of Tyler’s actions, even though they are the same person, i.e., founds out that he is Tyler Durden. He denies it, even if it makes sense (Palahniuk 173). Marla on the other hand, seems completely delusional. For instance, when Marla initially believed that she was developing breast cancer, so she asked the narrator to check for any lumps on her breast (Palahniuk 103). After finding a lump, Marla decides to do nothing about it. Ironically, she continues to go to a support group for testicular cancer, instead of one for breast cancer (Palahniuk 107). She doesn’t even care enough to go to a doctor for testing to determine if the lump is in fact cancerous. She is afraid and unable to deal with the reality of the situation so instead of dealing with it, she avoids it …show more content…

Compensation occurs when someone takes up one behavior because one cannot accomplish another behavior. In the novel, Marla gives a short description of herself, “she’s confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won’t commit to anything… and she’s worried that as she grows older, she’ll have fewer and fewer options” (Palahniuk 61). This tells us that Marla is continuously using compensation as a defense instead of just trying and failing. She believes that she can’t accomplish anything because “she has no faith in herself” (Palakniuk 61). Marla can’t deal with failure as an option, and she knows that this is limiting her because she knows that as time passes, she’ll have fewer

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