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.

Week 7

This week I finished Lullaby and started Fight Club. I've read to page 80 in Fight Club. I guess I'm a  little behind because I haven't finished all three books but I think almost everybody is a little behind and I'm confident that I will finish because I am really enjoying Fight Club and I have some good paper ideas.

In Lullaby the road trip family kicks Oyster out for being insulting and rebellious. He then responds with an ad about both Helen's retail company and Streator because the cops are looking for him. they continue on the road and Mona finds out that the entire time, Helen has been carrying around what they call the 'grimore,' a book of all known spells (including the culling song). This is the original source of the culling song and needs to destroyed. Helen becomes obsessed with the book and learns all the spells in it. One of them is an 'occupation' spell. It is used to take over someone else's body. She uses it on Mona a few times. But then Mona and Oyster get a hold of it and Oyster takes over Helen's body where as Helen he commits suicide for her? I guess thats how you'd phrase it. And kills her son whose been in a coma for 21 years. Helen is able inhabit another body in time and becomes a random policeman called "Sarge." (My summary kind of kills the dramatic element of the plot twist)

In Fight Club a man's meets Tyler Durden, a waiter and a fancy restaurant and a part-time movie projectionist. The narrator (who again name is never given. one of the many stylistic elements in Palahniuk's writing). The two end up living together after a tragic apartment fire leaves the narrator homeless. They start up a secret organization called Fight Club where they beat the crap out of each other with a bunch of other men as an outlet for life's frustrations. They also meet Marla Singer who attends weekly support groups with the narrator although neither of them are dying of any of the fatal diseases the groups are about. They do it to make them appreciate their own pathetic lives more. (I already know the crazy plot twist at the end b/c I've seen the movie but I don't mind because it makes me notice more clues throughout the book).

This is a passage from my previous blog:

Palahniuk uses a line at the start of Invisible Monsters to describe the wedding homicide scene, "No matter how much you think, you love somebody, you'll step back when a pool of their blood gets too close." (pg. 15). And in Lullaby, "This isn't about love and hate. It's about control. People don't sit down a read a poem to kill their child. They just want the child to sleep. They just want to dominate. No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have your own way." 

I wanted to repeat this statement because I found yet another sentence in Fight Club that fits with the pattern emotionally and stylistically. "Even if someone loves you enough to save your life, they will still castrate you" (pg. 68). Marla Singer in the book is describing how people dump their pets when they become unnecessary, ugly, or old. I'm not sure why Palahniuk chose to use the word 'castrate.' possibly to do with neutering dogs. I don't know. I honestly think its because he is a shock writer and likes to include weird intimidating, sexual, horrifying references. For example he often describes sex scene in his books that have a dark, gross twist. Like in Lullaby he goes into depth about the sex Streator has with his wife who he later found out was dead. EW! And Maya has told me about all of the disgusting sexual stuff in Choke. Anyways I'm getting off topic. My real reason for including this passage was to show his "Even you love someone (or someone loves you)..." format. I think that Palahniuk had some sort of rough upbringing with alack of love or a traumatic experience because he overall seems fairly opposed to love in general. I mean if you think about it NO one in his books experience true love and if they do he plays it down. For example in Lullaby Streator and Helen begin to fall in love but the character Mona claims that Streator is simply under a love spell because Helen now knows all the curses from the 'grimore' book. And she only put the spell on him to control him. the two end up together in the end but Helen uses the line "do you still love me" and he responds with "do I have a choice?" (pg. 294).