The Christianity of Fight Club

As promised, here's my thoughts on Fight Club and Christianity.

Ignore the urine-tainted soup. Block out the spliced-in pornography. Remove the mayhem from Project Mayhem and what is left? Underneath the destructive nature of Chuck Palahniuk’s universe in Fight Club is a religious framework. In fact, much of the doctrine and structure of Fight Club and Project Mayhem is uniquely Christian. Reverse the concept of sin, and enter into the religion of Tyler Durden. In this world, there is a God, a doctrine, and a code – all of which have striking parallels to Christianity. This Fight Club-Christianity connection reveals an innate human longing for more in life than the material, a greater goal. It suggest that humans desire a sense of purpose beyond their own individualistic needs to be a part of a more grandiose plan; a single cog in a grander scheme.

Why Christianity? Even in the first few page turns we immediately begin to note hinted references to Christianity through Chuck Palahniuk’s use of language. In the first encounter at the disease support groups, the unnamed narrator alludes to the Resurrection. “Every evening I died, and every evening, I was born. Resurrected,” (22). The dramatic tint added through the shorter sentence structure and paused-filled monologue gives a stronger weight to these words. Noting this, it is probable that the author intended this allusion to Christ. Later on, we encounter descriptions of being “anointed”, “saved”, and “resurrected”, clear indications of biblical stories. At one point, the author even describes each night of fight-club as a “church-like” experience. Whether consciously or not, Chuck Palahniuk writes in a manner that highly suggests a Christian undertone.

This possibility, however, solidifies in the presence of unmistakable, direct references to Christianity that occur later in the novel. In his flashback memories the unnamed narrator uses Biblical figures – Jesus, God, and even ‘Old Testament angels’ – to aid his descriptions (14, 141, 207). At one point, Tyler Durden even cites God’s promise to Abraham (found in Genesis and Hebrews), saying that being “numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky” was not enough to gain God’s attention and garner hope for damnation or redemption (142). In light of cited bible verses and familiarity with Christian concepts of God’s damnation and redemption, we can assume Chuck Palahniuk’s knowledge of the Bible and Christianity. The book’s tie to Christianity is evident.

In the opening scene as the unnamed narrator tongues the barrel of a gun, he questions where Jesus would have been (in history) if no one had written the gospels (15). Then instead of contemplating death, he concludes that he would turn Tyler into a legend by telling Tyler’s story, by writing Tyler’s ‘gospel’. And on the following page, the flashback story of Tyler Durden begins; in a sense, Fight Club is the Book of Tyler.

In this twisted version of Christianity, Tyler is God. At the narrator and Tyler’s first meeting, Tyler constructs a shadow of a hand using logs – a shadow that would be perfect only for a brief moment. Upon finishing, he sat in the “palm of perfection that he’d created himself,” suggesting that the creator, Tyler, is perfect (33). This scene calls to mind the biblical Creation. Created perfect by a perfect creator, this work was perfect only very briefly, much like how Eden, the biblical perfect world, quickly succumbed to the Fall of Man.

Concerning creation, we must first address the chicken-egg paradox of Tyler and the narrator. To appropriately compare the biblical Creation to Tyler’s birth, we must ask: who created who? Did Tyler create the narrator, or did the narrator create Tyler? A psychiatrist’s definition of schizophrenia and a straight-laced reading of Fight Club might indicate that Tyler is the created, the imagined. However, in the context of fight club as a religion, Tyler clearly becomes the creator. Although in the biological sense Tyler is a hallucination of the narrator, it is Tyler who resets the narrator’s life to zero (after his own version of an apartmental “big bang”) and guides the unnamed narrator through the IKEA-removed, anti-civilization lifestyle. Once the distinction is made between the pre and post-Tyler versions of the narrator, Tyler becomes God and the narrator, Adam.

The fact that their relationship involves the use of a single body is significant to our mapping onto Christian beliefs. Ephesians 2:22; 1 John 3:24; 4:13, etc describe how God (in the form of the Holy Spirit) lives in us. The incarnation of God within each individual Christian lives in us, speaks to us, and guides our daily actions and decisions.[1] In much a similar albeit more concrete way, Tyler is a part of the narrator and it is important that they share a body. Christians serve as vessels for God’s plan and desires; the narrator (again, more literally) serves as a vessel for Tyler.

Moreover, the almighty Tyler, god of a distorted cult religion, shares the qualities of omnipresence and omniscience – attributes of the Christian God (Jeremiah 23:23-24). Tyler is first introduced to the reader while on the world’s tallest building (12), the highest point of civilization. From here he looks down on a world that he manipulates through Project Mayhem and the space monkeys. But by this time, “nobody knows Tyler Durden. He’s become legend. He is everywhere and nowhere.” At this final scene in the story, Tyler has transcended the need for a physical presence; he exists in the minds and actions of every follower. Even his disciples do not listen to the words from Tyler and the narrator’s shared body. They boot him from a fight club, use him as a “human sacrifice”, and no longer heed his orders. Tyler’s true existence is far beyond his physical location.

Similarly, Tyler is omniscient. The Christian God is hailed and praised as all-knowing. For the purposes of fight club and Project Mayhem, Tyler, too, is all-knowing. For every small task, Tyler provides detailed and unusually intelligent instructions. He knows the three ways to make explosives. He knows how to make napalm from scratch. He can organize country-wide rebellions with ease and even fool his own bodily host. Tyler’s true omniscience, however, comes with being the only person to fully understand Project Mayhem. All other members only know their assigned task and can only hope their accomplishments serve a greater purpose. With omnipresence and omniscience at hand, “everyone… is part of Tyler Durden, and vice versa” (154).

To complete our bizarre religious comparison, we must reconcile the most obvious fundamental differences between Christianity’s moral code and that of Fight Club. God probably would not think kindly of Project Mayhem nor would Tyler follow the Ten Commandments. But realizing that both Christians’ and Fight Club’s share the ultimate goal of salvation, we can begin to understand what “sin” would be in the Fight Club religion. In the practice of Christianity, followers live in the image of Christ and attempt to act in a manner that God would deem good. This means helping the poor, being a good Samaritan, and in general doing activities that help to ease the suffering in the world. In essence, in the path of life Christian’s strive to ease and remove the ‘diseased’ components of society (suffering, pain, disbelief). What changes when applied to Fight Club is the definition of ‘diseased’; here, ‘diseased’ is defined as the chains bound to a person by their own environment, that which blinds a person from knowing their own power. To sin, in this case, would be everything that was the pre-Tyler narrator’s life – subjection to material idolatry and commercial oppression. If instead of a stable government Christians lived under an unjust, unrighteous regime, it would be biblical to take action, which at times was violent (fleeing Egypt, Jericho, punishment of King David). Tyler believes that the culture is oppressive, and Project Mayhem and its followers are the action he takes against it.

Before discussing the ‘religious doctrine’ of Fight Club, it is important to note the significance of ritual both in Christian practice and in fight club. One particularly interesting ritual common to both ‘religions’ is Sunday as a day of rest The very first fight between Tyler and the narrator was on a Sunday night. Fight Club itself takes place Sunday morning, and “except for five hours from two until seven on Sunday morning, fight club doesn’t exist” (52). The Remaining Men Together support group, the group with Big Bog after which the narrator could finally relax and sleep, also took place on a Sunday night. In short, for the narrator Sunday was when events took place that allowed him to relax and lessen his insomnia (or so he thought). For the narrator, Sunday was a day of rest.

From here, we proceed through the ritualistic path towards becoming a Tyler-Christian - that is, a space monkey – and show that the path is remarkably similar. As a word of caution, I have neither the seminary training nor the proper resources to firmly assert my beliefs as being the most wide-spread or most widely-accepted conception of Christianity. The concept of Christianity discussed will be my own understanding of it and my personal practice of it, limited in scope as it may be.

One of the key ideas in Protestantism is salvation by God’s grace, not by works. What this entails is nicely captured by Isaiah 64:6: “… all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” This verse suggests that the sinful nature of humans dwarfs all our ‘righteous acts’ in comparison to the purity of God. Furthermore, this belief implies that we cannot save ourselves; self-improvement is ineffective for salvation. The unnamed narrator of Fight Club understands this key belief and it later becomes part of fight club and Project Mayhem. At his support group, he realizes “everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash” and that “anything you’re every proud of will be thrown away” (17). On the day of the first fight club, this realization leads to the idea that “maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer” (52). This is step one to joining fight club.

Step two after accepting this idea is to hit rock bottom. Although the Tyler-Durden interpretation of hitting bottom may contain more painful side effects, the underlying concept is the same. I have, on more than one occasion, used the phrase ‘you need to hit rock bottom before you can move forward’ when discussing Christianity with a peer. Chuck Palahniuk even recognizes the Christian connection of this statement, explicitly including Jesus in the dialogue “Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don’t fall all the way, I can’t be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing” (70). What ‘hitting bottom’ means for Christianity is accepting our own sinful natures (1 John 1:8-10; James 1:13-15); or as Marla states it from the Fight Club context, it means “embrac[ing] [her] own festering diseased corruption” (65). While for fight club and Project Mayhem this concept also entailed physically losing everything, the Christian belief is that only after you accept the sinful nature and lose the idolizations of yourself are you ready to accept Christ. “’It’s only after you’ve lost everything,’ Tyler says, ‘that you’re free to do anything’” (70).

It is at this point in both the Christian walk and in Project Mayhem training that the complete realization of a lack of self-sufficiency (step one and two) creates an inner desire to follow something beyond oneself. It is this dearth that motivates one to follow Christ, or to follow Tyler. By putting goals and objectives outside of oneself, one effectively removes the possibility of failing oneself and increases self-worth by participating in a larger project. To examine this, we compare the followers of Jesus[2] to those of Tyler.

The space monkeys following Tyler in fight club and Project Mayhem parallels the disciples following Christ. In the Parable of the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30), Jesus explains to the young lad that he must leave all his material possessions to follow him. Jesus’ disciples had all already done so. The narrator, arguably the first ‘disciple’ of Tyler, had to (albeit forcibly) do the same. The narrator and all the space monkeys recruited for Mayhem seminary only had the bare minimum needed to survive: shirts, shoes, toothbrush, and little else. The purpose of the Parable was to teach the young ruler to break ties to material possessions. For the narrator, again it was the same; “I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions… because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.” When the disciples left everything behind to follow Jesus, Jesus changed their names. When Project Mayhem entrants left everything to follow Tyler, they had no names. We begin to see here Biblical model which Fight Club fits.

After removing material possessions and becoming properly enlisted as a member of Project Mayhem, the disciples must complete certain tasks: the “witnessing” of fight club.

A popular misconception about witnessing in Christianity is that the goal is conversion. Everyone’s an evangelist. Truthfully, the objective is only to ‘plant the seed’ (Matthew 13:38-39), that is, to bring awareness of Christianity to whomever he/she is speaking. In Project Mayhem, the same argument can be made. Members were required to make ‘human sacrifices’. These sacrifices, as with the example of poor Raymond Hessel the aspiring veterinarian, means giving another person a near-life experience – bringing about awareness of their own power. “We have to show these men and women freedom… and courage by frightening them.” Each member makes a number of human sacrifices and recruits new members. Each one of those new members does the same. It’s all part of a larger plan.

Looking towards the future, a key component in Christianity and Project Mayhem is complete trust in the followed. Christians find comfort in the faith that God is running the control booth upstairs. We each play our individual role, and that is enough. Things that occur happen for a purpose; Christians often rationalize painful occurrences with the assurance that all is part of God’s plan. Before the creation of the earth, He knew the past, present, and future of each individual and each blade of grass. In Project Mayhem, this ‘trust’ is explicitly written in. Built into the code of Project Mayhem is a no-question policy. Built into the infrastructure of the mayhem is mutual anonymity, mutual ignorance. A follower must trust Tyler. No one but Tyler knows the entire plan; everyone else just plays his own single role in the big picture. But then again, what is the ultimate big picture?

For Christians, the Book of Revelations offers the future. It prophesizes coming disasters and the second coming of Christ. It is in this second coming that all followers place their hopes for complete salvation of the world. Fight Club mirrors a similar situation. In opening and ending scene, havoc ensues on the entire world as Arson, Mischief and Misinformation Committees ruin civilization to ‘save’ the world. But “what comes next in Project Mayhem, nobody except Tyler knows” (125). Tyler presumably passes away and this marks the equivalent ‘death of Christ.’ But in the final chapter, the narrator lies in a ward while all his followers wait for his second coming. It is in the narrator that the followers place their hopes of the final ‘salvation’ through Project Mayhem. “We look forward to getting you back” (208).

Short of interviewing the author, it is hardly possible to determine whether this connection to Christianity was intended or just a subconscious effect. Regardless, however, noting this religious nature of Fight Club provides insight as to how the novel developed a cult following outside of the fictional space monkeys. Perhaps those renegade waiters and founders of local fight clubs in the real world are simply searching for a religion, and Fight-Club-ism is their good fit. Or maybe there actually does exist a Fight Club, a Project Mayhem, and a Tyler Durden. Then again, that’s probably a hoax. But unfortunately I must stop here, as the first rule of fight club is that…

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[1] lives: Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 3:16; speaks: Acts 8:29; 10:19; 11:12; 21:11; 1 Timothy 4:1; Hebrews 3:7; guides: Romans 8:14, 26; Acts 13:2; 20:28

[2] Recall in the idea of the Trinity, Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are three different forms of one God.