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Fight Club And The Man

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Two years into his college career at Harvard, Bill Gates decided to drop out and follow his own path. At the age of thirty one, Bill Gates became the youngest billionaire ever. While education is an important part of our society, it can at times be limiting. There is nothing wrong with the traditional route of four years in school and a subsequent nine-to-five job, but this path leaves no room for the extraordinary. Happy or not, those who conform to this standard sign away their freedom to fulfill someone else’s wishes. Unfortunately, most people pay this price without fully realizing the cost of American conformity.
In their novels, Chuck Palahniuk and Sloan Wilson reveal the negative effects of the conformity supported by …show more content…

Moreover, in a less concrete fashion Palahniuk suggest and inner power that is masked by mainstream culture. The best example of this inner power is seen at the beginning of project mayhem: ““It’s in the newspaper today how somebody broke into offices between the tenth and fifteenth floors of the Hein Tower, and climbed out the office windows, and painted the south side of the building with a grinning five-story mask, and set fires so the window at the center of each huge eye blazed huge and alive and inescapable over the city at dawn”(Palahniuk 118). Using fire as a symbol for power, and the eyes as a window into that power, the narrator once again suggests that individual power or value is greater than societal power derived from status. Furthermore, the office building is a literal mask that shields the flames. With this symbol, Palahniuk suggests that the traditional office serves only to restrict and inhibit one’s inner power.
Similarly, Palahniuk contends that the societal expectations of America create an impersonal and unsubstantial experience. Early on, the narrator gives a telling description of his life as an insomniac in this stereotypical world: “This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you”(Palahniuk 21). His insomnia, which is understood to be a side effect of

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