The story starts off with this guy who's going to these anonymous groups for people with terminal diseases, but he doesn't have a terminal disease. So right at the beginning of the book we have the main character searching out destruction as a way to solve his discontent. The cause of his discontent of course would be that he feels he doesn't belong within his own society, that his individual self has no presence when interacting with society as a whole. So the individual revolts against society, reasserting its authority over itself. And this would be the reason for fight club. what makes fight club so wonderfully appropriate as a beacon for the individual to rise up against society is that society finds the concept of fight club so abhorrent, it doesn't understand the logic. Society's morality dictates that we are all special individuals that are to cherished. We are all special individuals... something of an paradox, but as we all sway to society's rhythm we can see the logic. But if we take this statement apart and apply it to our own lives, because the western world believes this to be true, generation me as an example, and yet we are all alienated and desire/ are forced to be the same. One of the mantra's in this book was 'i am not a special snow flake' or something to that effect. By denying society's morality, the individual recognizes their discontent and counters it (of course in real life the contrasting extreme is no better than what caused the trouble in the first place, but one very much deserves the other... and its great for symbolic purposes:P). The members of fight club act in a way that society does not comprehend so that the individual can gain autonomy over itself, wresting itself out of the numbing grasp of society. This would manifest itself as destructive behaviour, both towards the self and towards the other, desiring the loss of the individual in a crowd, looking beneath the superficiality we create around ourselves to present as an image, and presenting something unacceptable in its place.
Besides the extreme need for society and the extreme need for the individual there is also the need for balance, hence there being three components to the novel. the aggravator, the aggravatee, and something detached from both. The aggravator would be society, whose desire is to quell individuality and can be found in characters that are 'normal' like the guy's boss, or the very motivation in each of our heads and within the scope of each character's awareness to conform to the bigger picture. The individual would contrast this in it's desire to rise up out of society establishing its autonomy over itself, and this can be found in the idea of fight club and those who believe in it's teachings. The third party would be able to see the benefits and flaws in both extremes, and that would be our narrator, or even the reader, and this person sees a need for both.. or a need for neither.
It was very symbolic, which I enjoyed, but if you're not the type that goes for symbolism... well it'll tap into your rebellion or something.. and it has the fighting (which is you reveling in the symbolism but denying it!). Great book though. I recommend.
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