Fight Club and I Essay -- Fight Club Novel Essays

Fight Club and I "What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women . . .. I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need." These words are from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club. Tyler Durden is the alter ego, and only known name of the fictional narrator of the novel. Tyler suffers from Dissociative Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Primary Insomnia, and probably a host of other disorders that I am not qualified to properly diagnose. "Women have caused me nothing but trouble for twenty-one years. That's it, I'm swearing off women . . . at least for a little while." These words were spoken by me, about two months ago. I am Aaron Mobley, a very real former U.S. Marine. I suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and abnormally high testosterone levels (yes, this was all medically verified). So what do Tyler and I have in common besides similar views on relationships? Quite a bit, actually. Tyler was raised by his mother. His father abandoned them early in his life and only had sporadic contact with his son. I, too, was raised by my mother. She divorced my father early in my life, and he made little effort to further his involvement in my life from that point forward. " If you're male . . . your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?" Also from Fight Club. As you can see, I really connected with this novel. Let's start with the most obvious similarity: antisocial personality disorder, or APD. APD is, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a pervasive pa... ...t. Grand Slam, baby! That 2-1 count had me worried for a second there. This essay is entitled "To my Father." It should read "To my Fathers," because it's for all of them. It's for the one who didn't give a shit. It's for all the ones who would've cared if they'd known. It's for the one that made me what I am today. And most of all it's for me, the only man I've ever had around to fall back on when things got too rough. It is 6:30 in the morning, and my paper is done. Works Cited Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington: American Psychiatric Association, 1994. Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1996. Twaite, James A., et al. Children of Divorce: Adjustment, Parental Conflict, Custody, Remarriage, and Recommendations for Clinicians. Northvale: Jason Aaronson, Inc., 1998.