Symbolism in Fight Club Palahniuk PDF

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Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk - an essay on symbolism...

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Symbolism in Fight Club

It is of paramount importance what impression is left on the reader after reading a few pages in a book, and so is the case when watching a movie. It accounts for captivating the attention and for a certain kind of excitement in the person involved. When it comes to the title of this book, it seems to suggest quite a mannish subject matter. Yet whether we read the book or watch the film, we gradually discover that it is not just a simple male-oriented story relating fascinating fights. It has a lot more to it, and it is enough to take closer look at the first chapter/ scene to see how much it is foretelling of a complex structure. We shall compare the incipits in order to investigate to what degree has David Fincher realised a faithful adaptation of the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Therefore, in the first part of this essay we shall discuss the opening chapter of the novel, while the second part will deal with its corresponding movie scene.

I. Incipit What first strikes the curious reader is the immeadite plunge into a climatic moment of the narrative. You are awkwardly placed into an intense episode happening apparently between two individuals. The narrator moves elliptically back and forth in time as he reveals sentence-bysentence a particuliarity about their relationship: ''Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that he's pushing a gun in my mouth. . . . For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends.'' 1 The dichotomy between past and present makes you wonder immediately what might have happened between them leading up to this moment. The dramatic effect and dynamicity is achieved through the use of short sentences, but more importantly through the verbs at the present simple. Thus the action is more graphic, vivid and everything seems more heightened, immediate. As the story unfolds in front of our eyes, it exudes the feeling that anything could happen and nothing has been decided yet. The writer also makes conscious use of synesthetic elements to ensure that each event imprints on one of our senses:

With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun. Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there's the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it travels so fast. [. . . ] This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the 1 Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club ( New York:W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 1

speed of sound.2 Knowing that there are only 10 minutes left until, presumably, Tyler pulls the trigger, an imaginary clock seems to hang above our heads, the minute hands getting heavier and heavier. If the countdown is not enough of a reminder of a catastrophic outcome, the excessive 14 time repetition of the phrase ''with a gun in my mouth'' renders impossible that a sense of unease should disappear. However, the narrator's strange admitting of the fact that he wonders how clean the gun is seems to serve as a comic relief. At this point we might be puzzled regarding the identity of the speaker. This subjective narrator doesn't introduce himself, but this might not mean anything. There a lot of books where the name of the characer is discovered only later in the action. However, this is a special case and by the end of the story everything adds up. Disocciative Identity Disorder establishes a crisis of identity when you don't really know who you are anymore. There is one sentence which bears more significance than at first it might appear, which becomes evident as soon as the spectator finds out that Tyler is just a product of the narrator's imagination. ''I know this because Tyler knows this.'', says he after he minutely recounts the stages of the production of bombs. Only later will we discover that ''everything is a copy of a copy'', just as Tyler is one of himself. The poignant repetition of sentences revolving around the word 'gun' may also be a clin d'oeil to the phenomenon of multiplication, like the self duplication of the main character. The fact that we are announced from the beginning what outcome to expect may strike as strange. The narrator tells us after a meticulous description of bomb manufacturing that the ParkerMorris Building will be blown to pieces. But why ''Parker-Morris'' and not any other name? Why not simply ''Parker Building''? Is it really necessary that the building represent a corporate firm? Or is it possible that this is another allusion to double identity? However, the chapter still manages to arouse curiosity by ending on a peculiar note through introducing the love triangle into the picture. We reach the last 3 minutes of the countdown and we can only wonder when will the action be resumed.

II. Opening scene What is essential to bear in mind is that it is extremely difficult to adapt such a fragmented novel as Fight Club, but as Deborah Cartmell states, ''this postmodern age cinema is more than

2 Ibid.

capable of mirroring the novel’s postmodern twists and ironies'' 3. The director David Fincher follows loyally the structure of the novel, adding only slight modifications. The adapted scene corresponding to the first chapter of the book only lasts about a minute and it does not comprise the first 7 minutes of the above mentioned countdown, but it succesfully incorporates the key moments from the book and inaugurates a similar feeling. The director chose to

begin

the

movie

by

the

same

manner

as

the

novelist

did,

in

medias

res.

The elements dicussed earlier which contributed to establishing an edgy atmosphere - such as the sudden plunging into the middle of the story, the use of the present simple, the short sentences, the excessive repetition of certain phrases - are adapted and further developed by directorial techniques which ensure the faithful adaptation which recreates the same kind of bizarre and uneasy sensation that the reader could feel when reading the first pages of the novel. First of all, sound is something a book will always lack but film-makers will always make use of to convey different meanings. The soviet director Sergei Eisenstein refers to it as having a the power of synchronizing the senses, ''making a single rhythm or expressive quality unify both image and sound''4. Nonetheless, when the images are not avalaible yet, just like in this is case of the opening credits, the dynamic soundtrack gains an anticipatory role as it foreshadows tension and thrill, forcing the viewer to await restlessly the commencement of the action. As the background music stops, the voiceover takes charge with a soothing tone which constrats with the vivid images depicting him in a rather uncomfortable position, toiling with a gun pressed into his mouth. The chromatic dimension is an equally symbolic aspect of the scene. We can perceive that it is dominated by dark tones, especially of darker hues of blue. According to Cirlot's dictionary of symbols, there exists a division of types of colours with distinct symbolic patterns:

The first group embraces warm ‘advancing’ colours, corresponding to processes of assimilation, activity and intensity (red, orange, yellow and, by extension, white), and the second covers cold, ‘retreating’ colours, corresponding to processes of dissimilation, passivity and debilitation (blue, indigo, violet and, by extension, black). . .5

That is to say, implementing such colours is not random: in this way, the director can add extra tension to the scene. The above described processes to which such colours correspond are very accurately illustrated in the scene: dissimilation may be an allusion to the fact that there are two very different individuals when in fact they are so similar that they are actually the same person, 3 Deborah Cartmell, A Companion to Literature, Film and Adaptation (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 347 4 David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies,1997), 265 5 J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (London: Routledge, 1971), 52

while passivity and debiliation clearly refer to the position of Tyler's victim who cannot do anything but wait in agony for a final decision to be made concerning his life. Among David Fincher's famously used directorial techniques is the excessive fluid tracking shot, which has become a trademark of his art6. This intervenes when Tyler is looking down by the window and the camera moves downwards without cutting, thus causing a hypnotic effect that hooks the viewer. As the voice-over continues, you get more carried away by the story but you can still notice another symbolical aspects. It is worth mentioning how interesting it is that the narrator's face is continually shown from a close angle, even at the end the close-up is directed towards him, while Tyler's face can never be seen. The camera records him from elbows down, and it is behind when it follows him to the window. Nevertheless, at 2:36 one half of his face is shown, but not even the most fanatic Brad Pitt admirer could figure out that it is him. So his identity – or existence, as we find out later on – might be called into question. The scene adops the chronology of the chapter and it ends by mentioning Marla. The action is heightened by the fast clock ticking sound and it is followed by a jumpcut to a whole another time and place, leaving the viewer puzzled and looking forward the aftermath of the last scene.

Conclusion The first chapter and its corresponding scene are very closely tied, the book is faithfully adapted, but we could perceive some differences in terms of where the emphasis is placed. Chuck Palahniuk subtlely introduced elements of great symbolism, while Fincher incorporated less and endeavored to install the appropriate atmosphere.

Bibliography 6 G.S. Perno, ''Director's Trademarks: David Fincher'', 2014, accessed 01.07.16, http://www.cinelinx.com/moviestuff/item/6492-directors-trademarks-david-fincher.html.

Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 1997.

Cartmell, Deborah. A Companion to Literature, Film and Adaptation. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Cirlot, J.E.. A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Routledge, 1971.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Perno,

G.S.

''Director's

Trademarks:

David

Fincher''.

2014.

accessed

http://www.cinelinx.com/movie-stuff/item/6492-directors-trademarks-david-fincher.html.

01.07.16,...