The central characters of the film Fight Club and Dostoevsky's novel Notes from Underground attempt to manage a severe psychological estrangement from society, each with a strategy that ultimately directs aggression towards the outside towards the inside. The nameless narrator of Fight Club suffers from a kind of masochistic schizophrenia rooted in his total contempt for society, since it effectively considers him a "nobody"; Dostoevsky's protagonist - also nameless, also mentally afflicted - attacks society within his own person, reveling in self-inflicted pain. The endless series of parallels between these two works strangely reinforces a shared theme, with each character a "nobody" crouching in an imposing universe of overextended artificiality; the Underground Man must be a copy of the creator of Fight Club, who actually resents being "a copy of a copy of a copy" more. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Interestingly, the narrator of Fight Club strangely resembles Dostoevsky's typical low-ranking civil servant; his disturbingly barren occupation—until he quits—mirrors the banality of his obsessive accumulation of material things, none of which makes evident anything substantial about his character. Not only does this narrator's lack of individuality exist as a product of the structure of modern society, but the schizophrenic aggression from which he suffers is due to what appears to be a hyperextension of his stifled individuality - screaming and kicking until it results in multiple aggressive "people". ” within the narrator's psyche. It is undeniable that each of these men is completely alienated, but what is more important is that, against all reason, it is each man who forcibly distances himself from the "reality" of society. 'Underground Man spends his entire life suffering from anger and fear of the outside world. Similarly, the narrator's self-imposed aggression in Fight Club can only be attributed to a painful resentment of society's values and, therefore, to the fear of drowning in an impenetrable artificiality. This fear that boils inside every man is not unfounded; he systematized atmosphere of a metropolis. The retreat from society of the parallel characters represents both a seditious rejection of modern life and a fundamental human need for identity despite a spiritually barren environment. If the cities that each of these narrators find can be considered comparable to each other, it can be said that the world represented by Fight Club is a sort of St. Petersburg fallen into the future. The Underground Man's anguish in the name of action, identity, and meaning is nevertheless timeless, but we find that Tyler Durden's (and Edward Norton, etc.) struggle addresses issues that emerge through philosophical dissent and in realities as concrete and immediate as mass consumerism and, furthermore, the nature of the acquiescence forced upon us, and expected of us, by society through the incessant publicity of actions and thoughts that promote a vast complacency in the vileness of modern life. Tyler Durden lives in the innermost part of the narrator's intellect; without a doubt, he is an anarchist who "has it all figured out". The idea that he, "Jack" and the anonymous narrator come up with, the perfect system, is one of complete chaos - the exact opposite of the organized, pre-packaged, corporate world...
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