Week 8 - Thesis Proposal

NOTE: I have finished reading Fight Club. So I am done with all my reading.

Thesis: Chuck Palahniuk’s use of chaos combined with stylistic repetition creates a cult-like environment enforcing post-modernistic ideals upon a usually pessimistic audience.
To explain the repetitive nature of Palahniuk’s writing I would mention both the stylistic use of repetition as well as his character structure. I would also talk about how the fandom of his writing has developed into a cult especially after Fight Club the movie came out. I would use an excerpt at the end of Fight Cub as well as www.chuckpalahniuk.net which both speak of the cult elements that his writing career has developed into.
Something I need to research more on is postmodernism. I have been lightly researching it, but postmodernism is a hard concept to wrap my head around. I feel as though it relates to the idea that society is in a digressive state, which is often mentioned in Palahniuk’s writing. He tends to incorporate the idea of “hitting rock bottom” to reach enlightenment as well as removing yourself from the norms of society. I think that incorporating postmodernism into my paper will challenge my critical thinking because I am going to have to do a lot of research on the subject.
I also might incorporate what I know about Palahniuk’s life into my paper to prove why he write the way he does. He usually omits love elements from his story lines and often includes general statements about his confusion and hatred for love itself. I know that his parents were divorced and his father and father’s girlfriend were both
murdered by the girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend and he even wrote one of his books, Lullaby, to cope with this event. In Fight Club he uses the absence of a father figure as a theme that could be directly connected. I hope to find some sort of biography on Palahniuk because all I have been using currently is wikipedia, which I know is not an acceptable source.