Howdy jacksprostate can you give us some thoughts on the narrators father/upbringing? Im curious on how you interpret what the book/movie gave us in terms of his absent dad
Also i love ur posts btw and thank you for replying to like all of my fight club art 😭 It genuinely pushes me to make more for the community so i thank you
Howdy :)
The narrator's father is an important, ever present, and completely lacking figure in the book and movie. (Obligatory disclaimer I mostly focus on the book) Here's some things I've been thinking about:
The chapter detailing fight club, its start, its rules, is intertwined with fatherhood. As the narrator explains his first punch with Tyler, as he looks upon his new disciples, as Tyler reads out the rules:
"Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.
Tyler never knew his father.
Maybe self-destruction is the answer."
"Me, I knew my dad for about six years, but I don't remember anything. My dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years. This isn't so much like a family as it's like he sets up a franchise.
What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women."
You have the lines, Tyler’s in the movie, the narrator’s in the book, you have:
"My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college.
After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?
My dad didn't know.
When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.
I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."
You have:
"Tyler was fighting his father.
Maybe we didn't need a father to complete ourselves. There's nothing personal about who you fight in fight club."
And you have his boss; his boss he blows up, Tyler constantly tells the narrator how he could do it, Tyler’s words come out against his boss about how he could shoot up the office, begging to be punished, using the copy machines, begging for more than nothingness; you have:
“The problem is, I sort of liked my boss.
If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.
Except Tyler didn’t like my boss.”
You have:
“I am Joe’s Broken Heart because Tyler’s dumped me. Because my father dumped me. Oh, I could go on and on.”
You have, Tyler’s words in the mechanic’s mouth:
“"Your father was your model for God.
…
If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?
…
What you end up doing … is you spend your life searching for a father and God.
What you have to consider … is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen."
How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate was better than His indifference.
If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
We are God’s middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.
Unless we get God’s attention, we have no hope of damnation or Redemption.
Which is worse, hell or nothing?
Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved.”
And we have Tyler using paraffin, so the narrator can be in Heaven, chided by God.
So like, what does it all mean?
A generation of men raised by women. His dad franchises, he’s not sure if another woman is really what we need. Men with no male models. Men with shit fucking fathers who are fighting them with impersonal proxies. Men who know they're destroying themselves because they have no constructive examples to follow because every single man just fails every son.
And that IS important. It's important to note there is misogyny in the fact that men demand male idols and refuse to even borrow women, but can I condemn them for the same thing I know matters to myself? Can I condemn them for wanting to see men who aren't shit, when I want to see women who aren't shit, when I want to see both not fucking failing their children? Shit fathers fuck over everyone, I don't think it's wrong to see that problem. It's classic male to say it by implying women are lesser, so fucking classic, but it IS true — they're in large part like this because men fucking fail everyone including each other and themselves. There is a gaping, wide fucking asshole where decent men should be, and they’re throwing fits about it rather than stepping up, but I think it’s notable that the narrator DID break the cycle. He’s not franchising.
And man, the Christian thing. Your father is your model for God because that is the point. Patriarchal religion serves a damn purpose. The father anoints himself as God, tells his children to have unbreakable faith, then disappears. What a shit fucking father. Isn’t disillusionment inevitable? When you can’t find him in his petty figures, not in your father, not in your boss?
Truth is, he says it twice. He likes his boss. As a person maybe. He’s around. But he’s absent too. He doesn’t give a shit. Just like his fucking father, he’s putting him in shit situations, telling him that’s just how it is, and expecting him to, what, be happy with it?
He likes his boss, but a part of him really wants to kill him. He likes his boss, but he begs his boss to do something, anything other than indifference. And he doesn’t. So the narrator invents his own boss, his own father, his own God, and he kills his boss, and he’d kill God and his father if they weren’t already practically dead and gone.
Dead and gone, even if they're there, he could beg them to care and they wouldn't. Society is set up for them to be the ultimate judgement, the hallmark by which you can measure yourself, the ruler for your fucking life, especially as a guy. And you get nothing. Indifference at best. Be the best son, disciple, worker you can, your boss God father doesn't give a shit. Self improvement isn't the answer. Wouldn't it be better, to know God, your father, your boss cared enough even if it's just to hate you?
Wouldn't it be great to track him down, tell God, "I am stupid and bored and weak, but I am still your responsibility."
He externalizes all that violence, it’s always Tyler who wants to kill his boss, who says he wants to be God’s enemy. And Tyler is his stand in boss father God, so just like the others, he leaves him. Even his fantasies can’t imagine better.
And honestly, yeah. Myself, I’ve got a pretty good dad. He loves me. He’s been around. I still hate his guts. He abuses my mom and I hate his fucking guts for it. If you asked my brothers, maybe they wouldn’t have that “but”. What he does to my mom is so baked into society that he may as well be a five star father. He’s not beating us. He’s still here. Can it really get better? I have friends that love their dads. But I don’t have any friends that love their dads that don’t have shit moms. When it’s not the choice between bad and worse. The bar is so low. What does that mean for us?
It’s so easy to point at all this and be disturbed and angry about this pathetic fucking white man letting his daddy issues result in terrorism, and like, yeah. But god, fucking everyone has daddy issues, and we shouldn’t. He’s right that it’s a problem. What to fucking do.
Fight Club sits as a “how to NOT deal with several major crippling problems in society,” obviously. But what are we doing to do? It’s not up to me, obviously. I’m not a man, father, not even someone who could raise her standards for the man she partners with, because I don’t do that shit. And hell, you raise your standards and men say you’re killing them and shoot up all the women in an engineering class because jobs are making them too uppity. So. It’s up to them, whether they decide that the fallout of having such a shit father means they should, I don’t know, change something. But as it is, father as God, boss as father is baked into society, the paternalism is extensive and everywhere. It’s baked in.
The narrator is a product of so many issues. A little clown car of a vehicle for them. I don’t really need to consciously think about what his upbringing and absent dad was like, because really, as he accurately assesses, “if his parents weren’t divorced, his father was never home, and here he’s looking at me with half my face clean shaved and half a leering bruise hidden in the dark. Blood shining on my lips. And maybe Walter’s thinking about a meatless, painfree potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone or the Earth’s desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but he’s probably not.”
Most people, on an overwhelming scale, due to how the world is damn designed, do not need to consciously think about what his upbringing and absent dad was like, because damn if it’s not relevant even if your dad was home.
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Y'know, this could just be projection, but I do think there is a genuine argument I could put together for Norman being Autistic or generally Neurodivergent Coded. There's just something about him that reeks of being the kind of person who instead of going "I'm human no matter what" decides that in the face of being dehumanized for his stranger traits says "Yeah, maybe I'm not human and that sounds awesome tbh."
I think it's also because he's constantly seen as spooky and mysterious by others; his laugh is unsettling and Buddy mentions Hating it. His sense of humor is strange and startling and Miss Rodriguez is very aware of this and feels the need to explain it to Buddy after he tells the poor kid Joey DIED. To me at least, it reads a little bit as Norman having just something about him that makes him unsettling and strange to others and instead of being shy or anxious abt it, he decided long ago to totally embrace it as part of himself.
He loves being strange, he's learned about this part of himself others don't like and has decided he likes it so it's staying. He's just such a laid-back, kind fellow despite his strangeness, I love him for it so much and one day I want to make an entire essay on his character. However…
This also ties into the sadder parts of him… Spoilers for DCTL ahead!
This is what Buddy says upon finding his body
“Norman.
Oh no.
Oh, Norman.
Of course no one would notice he was missing. Of everyone in the building. He watched everyone, but no one really saw him. Not much anyway.”
With the context of Norman maybe being autistic or neurodivergent in any way, this hits really hard for me.
Norman was a nobody; people enjoyed his company sometimes, but he was strange, an outcast. Nobody would notice he was missing, if he disappeared, nobody would search.
He watched everyone, looked out for them, but nobody did the same for him.
Except for Henry.
Henry and Norman were friends, Norman holds no grudge over Henry leaving and Dot notes the kind comments Norman makes towards the animator are unusual for him. Norman doesn't disagree with her either, those two have always been implied to have an especially close bond.
Would things have been different if Henry, mysteriously the only person who seems to have had such a bond with Norman, was there? Would Sammy have picked someone else knowing Henry would notice Norman going missing?
Maybe Henry just had something about him that made the two of them understand each other, despite their very different personalities. Maybe Henry knew what it was like to be a little "different" and "strange" to his peers, in the exact way Norman was. Maybe Henry wasn't seen as spooky or mysterious for it because it manifested in different ways, or it was just assumed he was like that because he was an artist. Maybe sometimes that made him feel bad, knowing Norman really was a sweet guy and others simply wouldn't give him the chance to prove it.
Because he was weird in the "wrong way."
Then he has to swallow seeing him further dehumanized in the cycle. Not even “Norman” anymore. Now only going by “The Projectionist”. The exact name others used when talking about how Weird and Scary he was. Now it was the only name they'd call him. Now he is a monster; the mindless, terrifying, twisted form others always saw him as, with nobody who truly understood what had been lost. Except Henry, the only one who saw humanity in him...
Y'know...
It's food for thought...
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