In this novel, I feel that death is a serious overlaying theme throughout. The quote "On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero," is a pretty good indicator of that. Everyone dies eventually, and in Fight Club, they do not show any fear or remorse for the dead. It is more like it just happens. The narrator of the story seems to be the most passive over death then anyone else. It's almost as if Tyler and Marla are the hope for the narrator to keep living in a world where all he feels is apathy towards death. Without them, his life really did have no meaning, but these characters have kept him alive, even if he does not seem to acknowledge this.
I feel that the quote I selected describes this pretty well. "Cancer will be like that, I tell Marla. There will be mistakes, and maybe the point is not to forget the rest of yourself if one little part might go bad." I think this is the narrator's sense of hope. He is saying that just because one thing goes wrong, you should not get hung up on it and not to forget that you still have the rest of your life to do everything. Cancer is bad, but is not something that should keep you from living how you want to live. In the narrator's case, his life may just be to bring down the rest of the world to the bottom with him, but he recognizes that even at the bottom, there is still life to be lived. Being at the bottom, having problems, is not a bad thing but instead just another reason to keep doing what you do. How about you?
Jackson,
ReplyDeleteAn interesting post (thanks!). This issue of death seems central to both Fight Club and The Plague (though possibly in very different ways). Might this provide a good approach to your next essay?