Lisa Bianco Wednesday, October 16, 2013 9672230
Classical Sociological Theory SOCI 300/3
Take-Home Essay #1 Question #2
The Characters in the film Fight Club both have unique ways of representing Nietzsches
accounts about whom owns power in society, our human weaknesses and justice. Edward
Norton’s Character is an example of a representation of Nietzsche’s idea that it is unhealthy in
hierarchical societies to become slaves to our memory and end up being trapped in our own
self-denial and moral laws crafted from those with high power in society. Tyler Durden represents
Nietzsche’s ideas of justice and how the character seeks revenge against the masters of society
using his intellect and resentment for society’s constraint to fuel his motivation. The film is also
a representation of what Nietzsche does not mention: how being a slave in larger and organized
societies can be unhealthy, and cause destruction to groups and individuals, despite the size and
strength of the society.
In the film Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character is introduced immediately as a
depressed individual trapped in his routine life filled, filled with no purpose. He is a conformist
to modern ways of living, demonstrated when he speaks about his constructed reality through his
Ikea purchases, and his meaningless job. He calls his own life “tiny” surrounded by single
servings of everything, including his friends. He is a slave to his job, to his boss and makes no
attempt at rising above. Nietzsche talks about the responsibility of a conscious man to value
himself and his freedom. He speaks to us about a ‘free man’: “the owner of an enduring,
idea of responsibility speaks of the great power we have as humans to control our own mind and
our own will. Nietzsche believes this to be what he calls a “privilege”. According to Nietzche,
with this conscious comes memory, and through memory is where we derive most of our pain
and motivation for guilt and suffering. Edward Norton’s character has an unhealthy conscious,
flowered with pain and memories of his simple empty life. Nietzsche would say Edward
Norton’s character is not a free man. It is our memories that fuel our revenge against what traps
our conscious. Nietzsche says “things never proceed without blood, torture, and victims, when
man thought it necessary to forge a memory for himself” (Nietzsche, 42). This explains that for a
man to have his greatest impact that comes in the form of a memory, it has often involved pain
and suffering. This could be the reasoning as to why Edward Norton’s character finds and
creates another being, one fueled with anger and resentment from being trapped in the routine of
everyday life. This alter ego has a greater ability to take what Nietzsche says is responsibility for
his own memories and create another conscious with a greater ability to rise above his pain.
Nietzsche says that it is with memory that society and our laws were formed, through our guilt
and our conscious. Nietzsche says the start of this moral world “its beginning, like the beginning
of everything great on earth, has long been steeped in blood” (Nietzsche, 46). This blood, this
pain and suffering that Nietzsche speaks of, is mans way of inflicting pain for justice. Nietzsche
says a free man should not feel guilt for getting pleasure out of the suffering from someone who
owes debt. Again, this can be compared to how Edward Norton’s character in fight club would
not be considered a free man to Nietzsche. His alter-ego, Brad Pitt, believes in pain and suffering
to feel alive. He believes in rituals of suffering and going against main stream society’s ways of
order. Brad Pitt created Fight Club as an organization, as a pain inflicting ritual that makes these
hurting themselves, feeling something real. It is an everlasting painful memory created by
shedding blood that provides them with more satisfaction than their constricted, average,
commoner lives. According to Nietzsche, this is healthy, this is freedom, and this is why Brad
Pitt would be considered to Nietzsche more of a free man. Nietzsche says “For this reason, in
fact, the aggressive man, the stronger, braver, nobler man has at all times had the freeer eye, the
better conscience on his side”. For Nietzsche, true justice and freedom from a bad conscience
rests in the hands of the reactive man. This is the reasoning as to why Nietzsche would say
Edward Norton’s character is trapped and unhealthy. He holds within him resentment, and for
Nietzsche this resentment fuels a bad conscience. It is only through Brad Pitt’s character that
Edward Norton is able to release this frustration and resentment.
Brad Pitt’s character is the polar opposite to Edward Norton’s character. He lives a non
routine life that would not be known to the common man in society. He is a non conformist, lives
by his own rules. His character, Tyler Durden, says to Edward Nortons character “we are
consumers, a bi-product of a lifestyle obsession”. He also says in the film : “the things you own
end up owning you”, and this is how he would call Edward Nortons life, owned and controlled
by society. Edward Norton’s character creates Tyler Durden to free himself of his misery and
purposeless life. Nietzsche would agree with Brad Pitt, he would agree that we live in a society
ranked by power and exchange value. Nietzsche says that “Setting prices, estimating values,
devising equivalents, making exchanges – this as preoccupied the very earliest thinking of man
…” (p.51), he continues by saying that it is at this point in time that “superiority over other
animals originated” (p.51). The exchange of power in society is what fuels Tyler Durdens Anger.
pleasure through pain. He relates to Nietzsches point about how justice and punishment to those
who deserve it should be a ritual, and should be enjoyable. Nietzsche says about justice “The
active, attacking, encroaching man is still a hundred paces closer to justice than his reactive
counterpart” (p.55). Fight Club demonstrates truth to this idea of Nietzsche’s reactive man being
closer to justice. Tyler Durden, reactive on emotion, careless and seeking revenge, lives a more
fulfilling purposeful life than his sad embodiment, Edward Norton. Nietzsche also makes a point
in saying “the measure of his wealth becomes how much harm he can sustain without suffering”
(p.53). Basically, the amount of power you have depends on how much you have to suffer. This
is another point where Edward Norton’s alter ego, Tyler Durden, would agree with Nietzsche.
According to Tyler Durden’s character, in our society, those with money and power do not have
to suffer at all. He wants to get back at those that can sustain themselves through their power. By
creating “Project Mayhem”, a terrorist act to take out all credit companies to erase the common
mans credit, Tyler Durden is seeking revenge for justice.
Nietzsche speaks of how when a society is compromised of more people, we can deal
better with those who are non conformists, such as criminals and/or other deviants. This point is
demonstrated when Nietzsche says “As its power increases, a community no longer takes the
misdemeanors’ of the individual so seriously, because they no longer seem to pose the same
revolutionary threat to the existence of the whole as they did previously” (p.53). On the other
hand, he also introduces the idea of slave morality and the motivation behind it that causes
people to strive to rise above, and make a change, despite the power and size of society. This
represents a weakness in Nietzsches account. Nietzsche speaks of the potential in slave morality
worth defending. In the film Fight Club, we see an example of how a large scale society can
actually be destructive and detrimental to mankind. The measures some may take to rise above
the master morality of a larger society can be found to be quite powerful and the effects
everlasting, such can be seen in the film with “Project Mayhem”. Project Mayhem is an example
of slave morality based on his intense resentment used to fuel his motivation to act out with
violence to prove a point. Although this film is fictional, these acts of terrorism happen in
modern society and its damage its unforgettable. This does not say anything to Nietzsches idea
that a large society holds more power and can deal with the deviants, in fact this film says the
opposite, that a larger society has the potential to fail, to be disorganized and be destructive to
groups and the individual. Edward Norton’s delusions’ and alter-ego creations are caused by the
effects of living in a large, controlled consumerism society. Fight Club was created as an
underground development for men to release their anger built up from the frustration of their
average lives. Fight club is telling us that our larger society which we believe to be healthy and
organized is actually plagued with consumerism and false ideas about what should be important
to mankind. Nowhere does Nietzsche speak of the possibilities that larger societies with great
wealth can fail at capturing its deviants despite its power. Nietzsche says “from now on the
whole community will take care to defend and protect the evil-doer from this fury, and
particularly from the fury of the directly injured party” (p.53). This idea that Nietzsche has of
collectivity is an optimistic view of larger societies. The film Fight Club is showing its audience
the opposite. It is telling us that our larger modern societies have poisoned our minds, and this
holds some truth. Fight Club shows us a weakness to Nietzsche’s account when he says all our
members will stick together to defend its society, this is not always true. In Nietzsche’s ideas of
Nietzsche does not speak of the destruction that could be caused when members turn against
their society, as shown in Fight Club.
In the film Fight Club, Tyler Durden’s character relates closely to Nietzsches accounts
about justice, revenge and how a society has slaves to those with the most power and ownership.
Edward Norton’s Character also can be directly coo-related to how Nietzsche speaks of the pain
and slavery to our own guilt and memory. Nietzsche does not talk about the possible failure and
destruction that can be caused by slave morality and a group’s idea to turn against its community,
