"This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom"

I found this quote powerful because it underlined the simplisticness that this book is writen with. The idea of a life not based on meaningless hopes that drive us to do things like get a car, work a job, get a wife, etc... is so abstract in my eyes that I appriciate the amount of commitment that I could never see myself doing. This quote also goes off the first quote ("Pull a lever. Push a button...") by depicting the amount of spiritual freedom gained from loosing this daily routine to achieve these meaningless life goals.
As Tyler says later in the book, "Only after disaster can we be resurrected", it takes the narrorator hitting rock bottom to begin his life with a different consience. With his hopes being shattered and his morals being challenged, he is able to view the world in a new light (as cliche as that sounds). The sense of nothingness that is valued by Tyler creates total freedom and maybe even to the point of anarchy. The book depicts the physical crumble of charectors (when fighting), then illustrates the moral breakdown that they embrace.

2 Paragraphs posted on Tuesday!

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?

Shannon looks like a teacher, which is just another way of saying that she is both intelligent AND gorgeous.

"One a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero." --- pg 17

This follows the theme that what most people do in their life has no effect. Everyone becomes a corpse 6 feet underground with out any to show what they did for the world. The theme of project Mayhem is to release the world from conformity. To release people into freedom. We pace through life at a social clock. We have our first kiss, we have sex, we go to college, we get a job, we find love, we marry, we have kids, we raise them well, we retire, then we die. We all go through this monotonous cycle. Everyone having to go through these steps. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. etc. Eventually, we all die. Period. Tyler shows the narrator that he can choose his life. He can choose where it leads. He doesn't have to be his boss's little bitch. Most of us don't do anything other than obey this social clock.

"Please. I smile big enough to split my lips."----pg 117

This is when the narrator is threatening the president of the hotel he was working for. He is getting fired and instead of just pouting about it like most people, the narrator takes Tyler's advice and threatens the president that he will let the newspapers know of his little deeds. Pissing in soups, farting on creme brulees. He starts punching himself, knocking himself into the wall. He is in a physical fight by himself. Yet it looks like the president did it to him. Who in their right mind would punch his own face? The narrator smiles so big that he splits his lips. I picked this line because it shows how crazy he is. How he has transformed into"a monster."

Fight Club

"This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom." This quote really poped out to me because I feel like, in a twisted way, it is very true. Hope is what keeps us going, the powerful force that drives us forward, but at the same time it can be a serious disappointment. When we hope for something enough, we almost convince ourselves that it is going to happen so when it doesn't we are filled with remorse and disappointment. To lose all hope means to lose all desire, and although it is a depressing point, that is true freedom. Freedom from desire, freedom from hope is the freedom from all things the cloud your mind. Humans are constantly setting goals so that they can achieve their life's ambitions, but what if you had no goals, you had no hopes? Wouldn't that mean that your mind is completely free. There would be nothing to work towards and nothing to disappoint you. I don't agree that people should lose hope, because when you lose hope you lose passion and when you lose passion you lose fulfillment. Without hope your mind could wander freely, but at the same time you would accomplish nothing. Hope is what drives us and causes us to set goals and achieve greatness, but if you think about it without hope our minds would be completely free.

The second quote that really caught my eye was this, "It's only after you've lost everything, that you're free to do anything." When you are able to completely let go, even if it is the hardest thing to do at the time, eventually it will open the doorway for new experiences and new ideas. The same goes for losing something, or in this case everything, only when its is completely gone can you move on and pave a new way. If you think about it, many things that are precious to us are really just an impedement. You may love your kids, but they do significantly restrict your choices and actions. Everything that you truly value, in one way or another, is really just holding you back in some regard. When you have lost everything you no longer have to worry about them (which doesn't mean they aren't still on your mind) and you can truly experience things burden free. It may sound harsh but it is the truth, everything we value has some way of holding us back.

Fight Club Quotes.

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero. (17)

This quote is significant because death is inevitable. Everyone you know and love and care for are going to die in the end and so are you. I think the author is trying to make the point that there's no reason to love or fight for someone because they're going to die anyway; you're going to die. There's no point in wasting all the effort when no one is going to remember it. Give it some time and YOU won't even be remembered. One day, the world is going to end. Humans will drop down to zero, and life as we know it will be over. I think this quote represents the main theme of the book because throughout the whole thing, Tyler is always saying you have to hit rock bottom. You have to realize you and all those billions of other people, are going to die. It sucks thinking about it, but it's true.

"Recycling and speed limits are bullshit," Tyler said. "They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed." (125)

I have to admit, the reason why I like this quote so much is that it reminds me of Telluride. Where everything is about recycling and "going green." Not that there's anything wrong with that, I think it's awesome, but this quote has some truth to it. The world is finally realizing that we have some major cleaning up to do, but if you look at the broad picture, it's really too late. We've dug ourselves a HUGE whole and trying to fix everything at the last second just isn't going to cut it. I think that's what this quote is saying. Sure, if you stop smoking because you're on you're dying is great- it makes you feel better about yourself- but in all reality, it's not going to help you, it can't save your life, you're on your death bed. I think this explains why Project Mayhem came into work; the world is ending and there's nothing you can do about it; recycling and speed limits really don't matter in the long run; so why not destroy the world and become famous for it? At least for a little while. I'm not sure if I agree with this quote or not, but it does make an interesting point which is why I underlined it.

Chancee is the best person ever. She's beautiful, intelligent, and I hope to grow up to be just like her!.

"One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but one minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection." I think that this passage creates a very good picture of a greater theme of the novel. I think a larger theme of the novel is perfection and how it doesn't exist. This group of people come together to essentially be imperfect by fighting each other. With the cuts and bruises all over their bodies in their regular daily lives they are physically imperfect. I think there is usually a perfect moment every once in a while and when it does come around it doesn't last for long but every person then looks for it and can recognize it as a perfect moment. This one sentence adds more to the book then any one really notices until the book is finished.

"I am Joe's Boiling Point"(71) I really like the contestant reference to this guy named Joe. He tries to explain his feelings in terms of what is happening to said Joe. I think this adds a lot to the style of Palahniuks writing as an author. It definatly adds to the whole "ADD" generation theory that Mr. Lavender was talking about. Its a little random and very to the point and I enjoy hearing about JOE.

Shannon Looks like a Teacher

“Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.” At the end of the fight nothing mattered because they were not fighting over anything specific, they were just fighting to fight. The concept about nihilism ties into this phrase because it means nothing matters. To Tyler nothing matters, he brings these men together to fight; but what are they fighting about? These men all come to fight club to fight about something, but they really fight just to get their anger out. But then Tyler always says that he always wants to destroy everything beautiful, burn the Amazon forests and pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up the ozone. Tyler wants to destroy the beautiful things in life. For example in the book he destroys many things, such as buildings. The beauty in buildings is, in my opinion, the structure of them and what goes on in them during the day. These buildings being burned are the buildings of wealth; their business makes a lot of money. But if nothing matters than why do they want to destroy everything?

While reading this book i really liked when Chuck Palahniuk brings up insomnia. For example i high lighted "...i come dragging in with every muscle bruised inside and out, but my heart's still racing and my thoughts are a tornado in my head. This is insomnia." Personally i thought this line was very interesting because he has insomnia, and he cant sleep ever. The only way he can sleep is making himself depressed. He does this by going to meetings for the ill or attending fight club. At night time all he does is thinks, he can't get any rest because of this insomnia. In this book he always is confused if he is sleeping or not, he thinks that he could be dreaming or it could be reality. I just enjoyed reading this because even sometimes i can't sleep, or at other times I think I am sleeping but i am really not.