Assignment
GROUP 1
1. Ch. 11: "HIDEOUSLY WRINKLED... PLEASE HELP ME!"(89). What is Marla storing in the freezer and why? Who is she getting it from? What does this say about our society? Relate your analysis to this passage:
"Tyler calls himself the Paper Street Soap Company. People are saying it's the best soap ever.
" ‘What would've been worse,' " Tyler says, " ‘is if you had accidentally eaten Marla's mother' " (87).
What is ironic about what they are doing?
GROUP 2
2. Ch. 12: "My boss is wearing his gray tie so this must be a Tuesday" (96). What is this passage about? What's the tension between the boss and the narrator? How is the narrator changing and why?
GROUP 3
3. Ch. 12: Who is the mass murderer in this chapter? Find passages to illustrate your point.
GROUP 4
4. Ch. 13: "The cancer I don't have is everywhere now. I don't tell Marla that" (106). What "cancer" is the narrator referring to? What is the narrator saying about birthmarks and the meaning of life?
GROUP 5
5. Ch. 14: "People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak" (107). Comment on the relevance of this passage in our society. Relate it to this quote: "Marla's heart looked the way my face was. The crap and the trash of the world. Post-consumer human butt wipe that no one would ever go to the trouble to recycle" (109).
GROUP 6
6. Ch. 15: "At Tyler's other job, at the Pressman Hotel, Tyler said he was nobody. Nobody cared if he lived or died, and the feeling was fucking mutual" (113). Analyze this quote and relate it to this one: "Sure... I might go to prison. They could hang me and yank my nuts off and drag me through the streets and flay my skin and burn me with lye, but the Pressman Hotel would always be known as the hotel where the richest people in the world ate pee" (114).
GROUP 7
7. Ch. 16: "By this time next week, each guy on the Assault Committee has to pick a fight where he won't come out a hero. And not in fight club. This is harder than it sounds. A man on the street will do anything not to fight.
"The idea is to take some Joe on the street who's never been in a fight and recruit him. Let him experience winning for the first time in his life. Get him to explode" (120).
Analyze this passage. Why is this hard and what is he saying this experience does for people? Relate it to our society.
GROUP 8
8. Ch. 16: "When Tyler invented Project Mayhem, Tyler said the goal of Project Mayhem had nothing to do with other people. Tyler didn't care if other people got hurt or not. The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take control of the world" (122). Analyze this philosophy and relate it to something else we've read.
GROUP 9
9. Ch. 16: "For thousands of years, human beings have screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil... And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born" (124). Analyze this passage and relate it to our society. What's he angry about? What's the hypocrisy he's revealing in this passage?
GROUP 10
10. Ch. 16: " ‘Recycling and speed limits are bullshit,'" Tyler said. " ‘They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.' "
"It's Project Mayhem that going to save the world. A cultural ice age...
"Like fight club does with clerks and boxboys, Project Mayhem will break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world" (125).
Analyze this passage and detail his philosophy. What are they protesting against, why, and how?