Fight Club, a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk, portrays the extremes of the passive and aggressive behaviors of the human mind. The philosophies and ideas that Fight Club imposes about life are those that can seem true to some, and entirely insane to others. The story of Fight Club is about one man, Jack, who is a schizophrenic with a second personality, Tyler Durden. Jack is the ordinary man, but Tyler Durden is everything that Jack wishes he could be. The irony all of this is that they are physically the same man, proving that what Jack wants to be, is feasible through his own physical being. The whole meaning behind Fight Club relies on Jack's schizophrenia and actions that he takes to "make himself better." The technique used to tell the story leads the reader to believe that these two characters are different, physically and mentally until the actual scheme reveals itself.
Life can be defined as, "The sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual," according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The novel Fight Club depicts exactly what the definition intends. The main theme throughout the entire novel revolves around how all of life's problems can be solved. The idea suggested by Fight Club demands the need to break down the human body to bare necessities to find the meaning of life. These ideas demonstrate strong parallels to an ancient philosophy known as Taoism. Tyler and Jack also both demonstrate strong examples of realist beliefs. In Jack's quest of life, he attends multiple support groups to determine what real pain was like in order to break his mind down further. Finally, the formation of the actual Fight Club is the most important step towards Jack and Tyler's breakdown of man. .
Fight Club illustrates an astounding amount of parallels to Taoist beliefs. Taoism began as a combination of psychological and phillisophical ideas, but later evolved to become one of the main religions of ancient China.
