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  • Essay / The fight against the system in Notes from Underground and Fight Club

    The central characters in the film Fight Club and Dostoyevsky's novel Notes from Underground attempt to deal with a serious psychological estrangement from society, each with a strategy that ultimately direct external aggression. interior. The anonymous narrator of Fight Club suffers from a kind of masochistic schizophrenia rooted in his utter contempt for society, which effectively considers him a "nobody"; Dostoevsky's leading man - also anonymous and mentally afflicted - attacks society in the realm of his own person, taking pleasure in inflicting pain on himself. The infinite series of parallels between these two works strangely reinforces a common theme, each character being a “person” crouching in an imposing universe of overextended artificiality; the Underground Man must be a copy of the creator of Fight Club, who indeed resents the fact that he is "a copy of a copy of a copy". Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Interestingly, the narrator of Fight Club bears an uncanny resemblance to Dostoyevsky's typical low-ranking official; his worryingly dry occupation—until he stops—reflects the triviality of his obsessive accumulation of material things, none of which highlights anything substantial about his character. Not only does this narrator's lack of individuality exist as a product of the structure of modern society, but the schizophrenic aggression from which he suffers is due to what appears to be a hyper-extension of his stifled individuality - screaming and kicks until multiple aggressive “persons” result. " in the narrator's psyche. It is undeniable that each of these men is totally alienated, but the most important thing is that, against all reason, it is each man who is forcefully distancing himself from the "reality" of society. The Underground Man spends his entire life suffering from anger and fear of the outside world. Likewise, the narrator's self-imposed aggression in Fight Club can only be attributed to a pitiful resentment of the values ​​of. society, and therefore to a fear of drowning in an impenetrable artificiality This fear which smolders in every man is not unfounded. Dostoyevsky's novel, as well as Fight Club, underlines that the reclusive nature of each person in society; modern is a direct result of the impossibility of integrating individuality into the systematized atmosphere of a metropolis. The parallel characters' withdrawals from society represent both a seditious rejection of modern life and a fundamental human need for identity. despite a spiritually dry environment. If the cities that find each of these narrators can be considered comparable to each other, we can say that the world represented by Fight Club is a kind of St. Petersburg immersed in the future. The underground man's anguish in the name of action, identity, and meaning is nonetheless timeless, but we see that Tyler Durden's (and Edward Norton's, etc.) fight is about issues that arise through philosophical dissensions and in such concrete and immediate realities. such as mass consumerism and, furthermore, the nature of conformity imposed on us and expected of us by society through the incessant publicity of actions and thoughts which promote a vast complacency towards the baseness of modern life. Tyler Durden lives deep within the narrator's intellect; he is undoubtedly an anarchist who “has it all figured out”. The idea that he, "Jack" and the unnamed narrator develop, the perfect system, is one of complete chaos - the exact opposite of..