Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

This summer I read the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Oddly enough the book starts off with the main character who goes unnamed throughout the book, and Tyler both standing on the top of the Parker-Morris Building which is on fire with and will imminently explode, and destroy the National Museum. Tyler had a gun in the main character’s mouth, and a police helicopter is over head. The bulk of the book is the journey of the two characters, from strangers, to friends, to roommates, to enemies. In the book, the main character, and Tyler start a fight club. It started in a parking lot, and ended up in a bar’s basement. As I write this I’m breaking both rule #1, and rule #2 of Fight Club, don’t talk about Fight Club, there is a total of ten rules. As the story progresses, more and more fight clubs open; and eventually Tyler and the main character create a Fight Club boot camp, which has every member do one task perfectly, whether it is cooking, cleaning, or yard work. The members are called “space monkeys”, and they do whatever Tyler tells them to, from tending flowers, to blowing up buildings. The main characters make a living by making soap, and selling it to high end stores, they work out of a rundown rental house, which they also call home, and house “space monkeys” in the basement. To feel alive, the main character goes from support meeting to support meeting; he did this before Fight Club was made, and when he had still lived a semi normal life, besides what the main character thinks to be insomnia. I feel the author's message was to doubt reality, the author expressed this in many creative ways. What I found unique in the book were the characters; the characters really make the entire story. A good highlight in the story was the twist in the end, and how the author describes heaven. One literary device used was foreshadowing, in the beginning of the book it really foreshadows the end; the author hints Tyler's secret all through the book. I liked the book, but I would overall not recommend this book to the class, as there is a lot of poor language, and violence scattered throughout the book.