chuck in classrooms

oh, and i don't mean just Lullaby.

Nope but i might in the future

I wrote a major essay for English classes comparing Tyler, Jack and Marla from FC to O'Brien, Winston and Julia from George Orwell's "1984"!

^^^I wanna read it

Yup, gonna talk about Chuck for my English oral exam next month.

i work at the uni library, and fight club is used for an american culture studies class each semester.

it makes me happy each time i walk past it or check it out to someone.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by stoyan [/i]
[B]I wrote a major essay for English classes comparing Tyler, Jack and Marla from FC to O'Brien, Winston and Julia from George Orwell's "1984"! [/B][/QUOTE]

That sounds interesting...

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by stoyan [/i]
[B]I wrote a major essay for English classes comparing Tyler, Jack and Marla from FC to O'Brien, Winston and Julia from George Orwell's "1984"! [/B][/QUOTE]
Ooh, that sounds cool. I'm writing an essay on sexuality and gender within 1984 at the moment (as well as in The Handmaid's Tale. It's one of those contrast thingimajigs).
There are a fair few comparisons between the two novels.
*contemplates whether she can sneak a few Palahniuk quotes into her essay without everything getting grossly off-topic*

I guess, you had to read and write letters to my old english teacher about what you read
and she had some summer school class read survivor .....

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by JKabol [/i]
[B]^^^I wanna read it [/B][/QUOTE]

Well, here you go:

TOPIC:
[B]Explore connexions between Nineteen Eighty-Four and another text of literature in English with which you are acquainted. [/B]

George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has not only had a great impact on people’s perception of society and its structure, but has also influenced many contemporary writers. One such author who knows Orwell’s book and has surely been influenced by it is Chuck Palahniuk. In his best-selling work Fight Club, many parallels to Nineteen Eighty-Four in plot, themes, and characters can be found. The most striking similarity between the two novels is in the main characters and their roles and relations. There is a remarkable correspondence between the characters of Winston Smith and Palahniuk’s nameless protagonist, between O’Brien and Tyler Durden, and between Julia and Marla. In fact, not only are these key personas comparable in their personalities, but also in the way they interact with each other and their surroundings.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a mesmerizing depiction of a society under a totalitarian regime, in which the protagonist Winston Smith is struggling to understand the contradictions he is facing. Winston is convinced that the world of ‘ingsoc’ is wrong in its fundaments. He is discontented by the values, morals, and principles of the party and is constantly trying to evade reality in dreams and hopes. “It was one of those dreams which, while retaining the characteristics of a dream scenery, are a continuation of one’s intellectual life,” (Orwell 27) he explains about a dream of his. In Fight Club the narrator is similarly frustrated with the insipidness and monotony of his life and involuntarily tries to escape it by both consciously and subconsciously creating a world of his own: “it’s not clear if reality slipped into my dream or if my dream is slopping over into reality” (Palahniuk 137). As can be deduced from their escapism, both protagonists are insecure about their existence and this is the actual driving force for the plot. A sequence of statements in an episode of Fight Club expresses the mental journey of the protagonists in both novels quite elegantly: “Sometimes, you wake up, and you have to ask where you are. […] You wake up, and you’re nowhere. […] You wake up, and that’s enough” (Palahniuk 33). First, there is the discontent and the questioning of existence, then the comprehension of reality, and finally the appreciation of senselessness.
The initial self-doubting is in fact why the protagonists live in isolation. Even though they pretend to have a normal social life, they are enclosed in their personal reality: “You can’t touch anything, and nothing can touch you” (Palahniuk 97). This idea is eloquently expressed in one of Fight Club’s narrator’s haikus: “Flowers bloom and die / Wind brings butterflies or snow / A stone won’t notice” (Palahniuk 67). For the same reason, Winston starts writing a diary. Nevertheless, to their loneliness there is always the opposing force of desire for comradeship. Both Winston Smith and Palahniuk’s speaker long for a sincere relationship with a friend, respectively O’Brien (“He felt deeply drawn to him” (Orwell 12)) and Tyler Durden (“Tyler and I were best friends.” (Palahniuk 11)). The connexion between Winston and O’Brien is one of a teacher and a friend. O’Brien is described as, “a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising child”(Orwell 196) and “a person that you could talk to” (Orwell 12). Both of these characteristics can be recognized in Tyler Durden. His role is not only one of a companion, someone to share the narrator’s dream world, but also one of a guide to redemption. This idea of spiritual tutoring is a major characteristic of O’Brien’s and Tyler’s personality.
In both novels, the protagonist is led though the story by this close friend and tutor: O’Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Tyler Durden in Fight Club. There are several analogies between these two characters. The major one is in their belief about helping the protagonist. “I shall save you, I shall make you perfect,” (Orwell 193) says O’Brien. Tyler in Fight Club is also, “fighting to save [the narrator’s] spirit” (Palahniuk 110) and the similarity in their approach is amazing. While Tyler says that everything great is achieved through pain, and that “Maybe self-destruction is the answer” (Palahniuk 49), O’Brien tells Winston that, “It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane” (Orwell 198). Actually, both mentors are certain that one has to consciously renounce one’s former believes and values in order to be capable of understanding and appreciating the new reality that is offered; in fact, “the act of submission is the price of sanity” (Orwell 197). Tyler, too, makes clear that, “first you have to give up […] you have to hit bottom” (Palahniuk 76). O’Brien and Tyler Durden are very akin in their methods of enlightenment and in their convictions.
Other resemblances are also present. “‘This is our world, now, our world,’ Tyler says, ‘and those ancient people are dead’”(Palahniuk 14). Tyler believes in the individual’s ability to shape reality and history. The same holds true for O’Brien. While he truly trusts the party and accepts history as constantly changing, O’Brien is convinced that reality is the subjective product of one’s own believes, “reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind” (Orwell 197). In regard to the past Tyler also wants, “to blast the world free of history.” (Palahniuk 124) As seen above, there is a noteworthy similarity between the two characters in their perception of the world, their personalities, and in their function as teachers and comrades of the protagonists.
The third major character in Fight Club is Marla Singer, who is very much like Julia in Orwell’s story. Regarding Marla, the narrator explains that, “There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with” (Palahniuk 38). Winston makes a similar statement about Julia, saying that she is of the, “people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the party as something unalterable” (Orwell 108). The dilemma of both protagonists is that even though they are attracted and fascinated by Julia and respectively Marla, these do not share their ideas completely. Unlike O’Brien and Tyler, the female characters in the novels cannot fully understand the problems of the protagonists and serve barely as companions, rather than as understanding friends. Both Marls and Julia are hedonistic, searching for personal benefit where possible, and avoiding unpleasant situations.
As has been noted, there are many correlations between the characters in the two books. Indeed, in Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell has created a set of archetypes for the modern times, which can clearly be identified in Fight Club. Observing the personalities of the different personas and their relationships, one sees how the plot evolves naturally, conducting the protagonist from a world of madness to a world of even greater madness.

Works Cited

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. Vintage: London, 1997
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Penguin Books: London,
1988.

Dude that is truly awesome. I've read both books many times and I always thought there was a basic connection (i.e. both main characters are against the system in different ways and thus go against it differently) but this essay truly is insightful. Very well done. What mark did you get, or hasn't it been marked yet?

I got 94%.
I actually gave "Fight Club" to my teacher in the hope he would read it and understand the essay better, but he said he just read about 20 pages of the book "to get a feel of it." It seemed really stranged to me how someone can resist reading FC after reading 20 pages of it...

Wouldn't it be great to do a Guts reading in class? Imagine the possibilities...

I think the first line of my oral exam next month will be:

"Good morning. I'm going to talk about Chuck Palahniuk, a 42-year-old author from Portland, Oregon, whose interests include organized chaos, gardening, and Brad Pitt's lips."

In my lit class, one of the assigned readings is Fight Club... which is why, of course, I got into the class! Woo hoo.

[QUOTE=lupus]just curious... How many of you guys (and girls) are using chuck for school/university work?[/QUOTE]
I use his stories in just plain everyday life....it can be realated to nearyl everything... but i did a thing on Fight Club in english

Stoyan,
Very well writen...i enjoyed that.

[QUOTE=bonjovigrl]Stoyan,
Very well writen...i enjoyed that.[/QUOTE]
Thank you!
[QUOTE=bonjovigrl]i did a thing on Fight Club in english[/QUOTE]
Post it!

i wrote a comparison/contrast paper for english using lullaby and choke. it got an 'a' like all my english papers. i remember when we did 'peer editing', the guy who read it was a nerdy pretentious idiot who didn't seem to believe the people in the book actually did that stuff. his paper was on two books from the bible.
i might be able to find it somewhere...

Agghhh! This thread makes me wish I taught at a university level, as it's very hard to get this kind of stuff added to my high school's curriculum. At this rate, I don't think I'll ever teach Chuck's books.

I read his books for school, but of course when reading Choke i had to be carefull when to read it.

also my freshman thesis was on Fight Club

In my novels class in high school, my teacher read "Guts" out loud. She kept laughing during it. Some people were disturbed, but it was mostly girls in the class.

I did a project on Invisible Monsters in my AP Language and Composition class in high school. It was supposed to fit under the theme of woman, but as I got further into the book I realized that my presentation was going to be a tad difficult.

I also used Haunted throughout an essay I did for AP Literature and Composition about the human condition and experience. I used quotes and concentrated on the story with Adam and Eve (the exact title doesn't come to mind right now).

I taught a student-led course on FC (book and movie) at UC Berkeley. Our turn-out was great--- we had students spilling out of the classroom to sign up. Unfortunately we could only take 30 students, but the class was successful and popular, I think. It was fun creating a curriculum around the various anti-establishment ideas that FC presents, especially at Berkeley, where people a bit more partial to that sort of thing.

More and more kids in my english class have been doing book reports on Palahniuk's stuff.
By far the best was the kid who acted out the scene from Choke where the old lady accuses him of molesting her when they were younger.
The guy he had read the part of the old lady hadn't even seen the script before they got up in front of the class.
Just try to imagine the way he hesitated before reading "...diddled.. my... weewee?"
It was almostalmost worth my copy of choke (the asshole never gave it back to me.)