| Original Message |
Danielle Cerullo (no login)
Posted Apr 22, 2008 8:13 PM
Similar to Jessica Watson's, but with a twist, my paper focuses on the absence of parental involvement, specifically concerning the absence of the father, in the novels Fight Club and The Elementary Particles and how the absence of parents and a family institution causes the characters Jack, Tyler Durden, Bruno and Michel all to be troubled adult men who lack a masculine identity (with the exception of Tyler Durden) and also lack the ability to fulfill self-desires and the desires of others (again with the exception of Tyler Durden who "Jack" created in order to be the masculine identity that he aspired to be). This ultimately drives all of the characters to seek out surrogate families in various forms.
For Jack, his surrogate family or families are all of the therapeutic self-help support groups that he attends, such as, Men Remaining Together. For Tyler Durden, his surrogate family is Fight Club, which essentially is Jack's surrogate family too. For Bruno, his surrogate family is at the Lieu du Changement in the form of sex groups. Lastly for Michel, his surrogate family is his work, science. Perhaps it is most interesting that Michel's work at the end of The Elementary Particles creates the means to which humanity ends and there is no longer a need for family.
The question I plan to answer in my research paper is, How are the characters in these two novels affected by abandonment and the lack of a family institution as children and in what way do they cope with these affects as adults?
|
|
|