A Response To Fight Club

Soap: a substance used for washing or cleaning, consisting of a mixture of sodium or potassium salts of naturally occurring fatty acids. As many of us use this detergent in our every day lives, we usually do not ponder the symbolic nature of this decontaminating agent due its unimportant cameos in literature. Though this is most commonly the answer to the literary conundrum, Chuck Palahniuk’s famous novel Fight Club shows how this inanimate cleanser, can hold such meaning. 

In the beginning of the story, we find our protagonist who narrates the story. Many may find this style of writing similar to H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds, where we also have a nameless main character guiding us through the plot line, adding their own humerus dialogue along the way.  Continuing with the story, the protagonist, while on a plane trip, meets a very important character: Tyler Durden. When the narrator first meets Tyler, Tyler declares that he is a soap salesman, although Tyler has various other occupations including a night-time movie projectionist and a waiter. Tyler, however, most identifies himself with the job of selling soap, thus lending weight to the symbolic importance played by soap in the book. Tyler calls soap "the foundation of civilization" and tells the narrator that "the first soap was made from the ashes of heroes". He also uses lye, a chemical ingredient of soap, to introduce the narrator to the pain of "premature enlightenment." The act known as "premature enlightenment" is quite torturous due to it meaning Tyler pouring lye, which is a corrosive alkaline substance, onto the hand of our protagonist.  In this role, soap is a symbol of purification and cleanliness, of a culture lacking the hypocrisy and fraudulence of contemporary culture. However, in that Tyler makes soap by stealing fat from the liposuction clinic dumpsters and then sells these soaps "to department stores for $20 a bar", soap also represents a too highly refined culture, a culture where all traces of natural humanity are suppressed, effaced, and washed off. Rather than being made from the "ashes of heroes", soap is made from "selling rich women their own fat a**es." The fact that Tyler is a salesman for this product represents Jack's subservience to this culture. As the story goes on both Tyler and out main character create an underground fighting faction known as Fight Club. Fight Club is founded as a way for men to regain their primitive instinct that culture tries to wash off. In the end, the main character finds out that Tyler and his gang of thugs have used the discharged substance of soap making, glycerin, and mixed with nitric acid to create nitro glycerin, a very powerful explosive. With this hazardous material the group led by Tyler known as Project Mayhem, rig them to vans conveniently placed in major banks. By doing this the gang hopes to accomplish human equality where no one is based off the money in their wallet, but the skills that they posses.  In this instinct, soap being shown as the purity in this book has been demolished due to its violent ways of mankind’s equilibrium.  

Through out time, people have relied on soap for many of their predicaments. Sicknesses, they fight; filth, they defeat; the evil, they conquer. Through this, humanity created a mental picture of protection and purity. This idea was shattered with one novel: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, showing us that even soap can be filthy.