Because their individuality is suppressed and their identities are controlled, the young males attempt to escape the society. Both protagonists understand their existence in the society, yet they struggle to find their true identities. The unnamed narrator in Fight Club creates his own hyperrealistic world within the society by creating a bold alter ego, Tyler. In midst of the narrator's pre-Tyler identity crisis where "everything is so far away [like] a copy of a copy of a copy", the narrator seeks comfort from attending cancer support groups (Fight 21). The support groups were better than real life because he was free to be someone else who was approaching death and had a sense of authentic reality. Because of this experience, alter ego Tyler Durden creates fight club as a place where men could "get [their] hands on everything in the world that didn't work" and fight "something they're too scared to fight" (Fight 54). At fight club, the men could be stronger, fearless versions of themselves and physically fight off their problems. Fight club provides "the formation of a new identity apart from the one mandated by capitalist society" and "thus opens up a separate space that is divorced from the dependency and servility of the (capitalist) world of exchange" (Joseph Suglia). Similarly, Victor Mancini in Choke attempts to escape society by exploiting his job at Colonial Dunsboro and "establish[ing] [his] own alternate reality" (Choke 31). Alex Blazer relates Colonial Dunsboro, the living history museum, to the hyperrealistic society and points out how "we are all tourists in our own lives, seeking pleasure from pretend worlds in every aspect of our lives" (147). Although Victor just immerses himself back into a hyperrealistic society at Colonial Dunsboro, he is able to become a character and a 'someone', in contrast to not having an identity at all. Victor also seems to grasp reality better at Dunsboro, especially when he points out how the "jetliner roared low" during a scripted show, "drowning out [the governor's] little speech" (Choke 192). His attitude and actions at Colonial Dunsboro, along with the general understanding of how a "living history museum also kills objective reality" manage to all slightly contradict one another while proving the same point; Victor attempts to escape the oppressive society by immersing himself in an alternate reality that resembles a more hyperrealistic society (Alex Blazer 147).
When they set out to find their identity and achieve empowerment, the young males become addicted to seeking attention. Modern culture has forced dependency upon the protagonists because "the culture sickens and makes [them] sick, and the very medicine it prescribes becomes part of its poison" (Eduardo Mendieta). As fight club increasingly becomes popular, the narrator (and therefore Tyler) begins to attempt escaping society in a different way in Fight Club. The narrator creates and controls his own made-up world, and by placing Tyler as a god-like figure in this fake world, he attempts to break free from the actual society. Although his new method seems bizarre and almost counter-intuitive, this is the narrator's second method in attempt to regain identity. As Tyler begins to gain power increasingly, he creates a rebel cult, Project Mayhem, ultimately brainwashing adolescent males into valuing uniformity. He recreates the homogenizing culture within the cult to gain an even stronger sense of identity and individuality by being the only "different" one. Members of the cult, referred to as space monkeys for their lack of identity, all begin to repeatedly tell themselves that "individually, [they] are nothing" because "our culture has made us all the same" (Fight 134). Tyler starts scarring the backs of the space monkeys' hands with lye, and the space monkeys eventually start using lye to burn off their fingerprints, symbolizing the eradication of individuality and destruction of identity. The narrator describes the lye kiss as it "cling[s] in the exact shape of Tyler's kiss [like] a branding iron", creating the allusion to slavery (Choke 75). Tyler presents himself as more distinguished and worthy than the space monkeys, like a master feels superior over his slaves. By being the founder of such a crazy cult, Tyler proceeds to accomplish crazier deeds and becomes addicted to "getting God's attention for being bad" because that was "better than getting no attention at all" (Fight 141). Opposite to the narrator and Tyler, Victor becomes addicted to publically acting vulnerable for random strangers to gain their attention and pity. Unable to sustain his needs financially by just working at Colonial Dunsboro, Victor has a daily routine of choking in restaurants just to be saved by good Samaritans. He repeatedly claims that people save him to "get what they want, plus a good story to tell", a candid yet pessimistic approach to being saved (Choke 133). This approach illustrates Victor's ultimate flaw for "not believ[ing] in anything because he consciously realizes that the world is comprised of nothing" which again supports the claim of a hyperrealistic society (Blazer 143). Victor implies that the people who save him want to adopt the savior-like identity and feel stronger and more confident. Although Victor explains his choking scheme as a good deed, helping others feel special and godly, choking also represents Victor's addiction to mean something to others. Just like his attempt to escape the hyperrealistic society by taking on a fictional identity, Victor takes on a newer approach by becoming "the choking person" to random strangers.
Alex Blazer insists that Victor chokes to also "annihilate himself for being nothing more than a shifting subject of postmodern hyperreality" (154). A similar approach of self-destruction is observed in Fight Club, as Tyler attempts to encourage the narrator to destroy his lifestyle that "serve nobody well, and recognize the importance of mortality" ("Chuck 1962"). Tyler's core main idea links self-destruction to realizing the importance of life, because "only after disasters can [individuals] be resurrected" (Choke 70). Palahniuk argues that to achieve empowerment and attention, young men risk self-destruction by challenging death.
The young men sacrifice themselves and seek to self-destruct, hoping to create a new identity. The underlying idea for Project Mayhem in Fight Club focuses on "the amazing miracle of death" and how one can change from a living person to a mere object in a second (Fight 146). Both the narrator and Tyler believe that exposure to mortality demonstrates the vulnerability of humans and will serve as the ultimate motivation to search for a new identity. Fight club, a place that provided as an asylum to young men, "posits a self-sufficient universe in which control and force are achieved through self-destruction" (Suglia). By physically sacrificing themselves by fighting, the members of fight club seek to self-destruct and become a new person. Near the end of the novel, the narrator reveals Tyler's true identity, and explains to readers that Tyler represented everything he wanted to be. The narrator's attempt to create a new identity was Tyler; to take on a new identity, the narrator sought to ruin his life because "[his] life just seemed too complete", and he sought "to break everything to make something better out of [himself" (Fight 52). He wanted "to free himself from the superficiality of a capitalist world" and find his true identity by self-destruction that "grants him a real and intense sense of life" (Suglia). Similarly in Choke, Victor seeks to destroy his own miserable life by denying his physical addiction to sex. Although sex addiction might seem to not be life-threatening or self-destructive, Victor's reluctance to recover from his addiction and "attempt to make himself whole" represents a disease where he finds his identity only and during sex (Alan Davis). Mendieta explains how "there is a disease that ravages the body and desolates the mind that unhinges our identities", which resembles the self-destruction in Fight Club, and then there is "the disease of the imposed dependency…based on a social and culture pathology". Victor first uses sex as a way to escape the hyperrealistic society. He sought real feelings from what he physically felt through sex. However, he later begins to seek identity as an addict and attempts to cling on to his addiction to maintain his new identity. He graphically explains how he now thinks of gruesome images to keep from climaxing; "stuffing dick, stuffing feelings. When you're a sexaholic, it's for sure the same thing" (Choke 210). He identifies himself as "a dirty, filthy, helpless sexaholic" and he claims that "[he] can't change, can't stop, and [a sexaholic] is all [he]'ll ever be" (Choke 156). Because he is attempting to create a new identity as a sexaholic by self-destruction (submitting to addiction), he is trying to avoid enlightenment that sex "offers no real satisfaction and throws the pleasure-seeker into an endless cycle of repetition, forever desiring an authentic, real world foundation" (Blazer 148).
By challenging death and seeking self-destruction, the young men recognize the importance of life, motivating the protagonists to live without regrets. Both novels portray protagonists "exposing [themselves] to the mortality of others, [as] every moment of [their] life become more valuable"; this is seen not only in the examples mentioned above, but in other scenes as well (Suglia). In Fight Club, Project Mayhem members attempt to "show men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them" (Fight 149). The space monkeys threaten random people to death to forcefully encourage them to appreciate life and live without regrets. As an active participant in Project Mayhem's disastrous missions, the narrator recognizes that life is dispensable and "the lower you fall, the higher you'll fly" (Fight 141). He comes to understand why Tyler, despite his extreme measures, wanted the narrator to "run from self-improvement and…run toward disaster" (Fight 70). In the Project Mayhem mission where the narrator threatens a man that he would "rather kill [the man] than see [the man] working a shit job for just enough money to buy cheese and watch television", the narrator concludes that an individual can only fully understand the importance of life and one's full potential by facing death (Fight 155). In contrast, Victor recognizes the importance of life and is motivated to live without regrets by saving himself from self-destruction. He suddenly sees the stupidity of sex-addiction from realizing that his life is centered on women. When he was spending time with his best friend Denny at a strip club, Victor points out how "all women have to do is get naked, and we give them all our money" and declares that he's "not giving any more ground" and "going on strike" (Choke 204). He notes that he doesn't need women because "there are plenty other things in the world to have sex with", and finally realizes that sex does not lead to an identity because a genuine relationship is lacking between his multiple partners and himself (Choke 204). Sexual addiction represented Victor's method of self-destruction, "just another way to find peace [and] escape what [he] know[s]", and by refusing to submit to the rehab centers he numerously visited, Victor is able to recognize his full potential on his own (Choke 150).
Understanding that life is too precious to be wasted, both the narrator and Victor gain empowerment. They achieve the ability to control their own addictions and seek self-actualization from genuine affection and relationships with humans. Palahniuk's most important message is illustrated in the protagonists' transformation from seeking self-destruction to finding authenticity in something in such a hyperrealistic society. By taking risks that change their outlook on life, the protagonists realize that they need affection to escape the oppressing society.
The protagonists recognize that the sacrifices they made were to ultimately belong to a community. Throughout Fight Club, the narrator strives to follow Tyler's orders, so much that "Tyler's words [were] coming out of [his] mouth", and becomes Tyler's obedient pet (Fight 114). The narrator repeatedly says the phrase, "I know this because Tyler knows this", suggesting Tyler's ownership over the narrator and the narrator's lack of self-dependency (Fight 12). This quote appears every time the narrator explains the bizarre events in his life, from the explosion of his condo to the death of his boss; events that were all done by the narrator hypnotized by Tyler. Despite the narrator's claims that Project Mayhem was slowly turning into Tyler's cult, he continually takes part in the cult activities. He's becoming "Tyler's mouth" and "Tyler's hands" because "everybody in Project Mayhem is part of Tyler Durden" (Fight 155). Again, the narrator sacrifices himself and exposes himself to death during the Project Mayhem missions because "[he is] useless to [Tyler] until [he] knows that someday [he] will die" (Fight 76). The narrator takes part in these missions and seeks to self-destruct to be useful and liked by Tyler. Victor similarly makes sacrifices for human affection. Related to his addiction of seeking attention by choking, Victor also seeks attention from his crazy hospitalized mother, Ida. Contextually, Victor is sacrificing literally everything for his mother by working a horrible job and choking in public for money. He, however, is also sacrificing his identity and contentment to support his mother. He states how "women are always bossing [him] around…for themselves", which is especially relevant with his mother (Choke 204). Ever since childhood, not only has Ida "kidnapped him from various foster homes when he was a child", but also has trapped him into "a helpless believer of [her] delusional conspiracy theories" (Blazer 146). Teaching him "to create [his] own reality" and to never "just accept the world as it's given", Ida gave him a false sense of empowerment as a child, which is why Victor faces identity issues in a hyperrealistic society (Choke 284). He struggles to understand "the authenticity of emotion" because he "is severed from his own authentic identity and subsists in fantasy" (Blazer 146). On top of these sacrifices, Victor also becomes "the sacrificial lamb that his senile mother and her demented friends can blame" at the hospital (Blazer 153). Because Ida and other patients at the hospital are mentally ill, they do not recognize Victor and see his body as somebody else they know. Victor takes on multiple identities given to him by these crazy patients, seeking attention from them. Just like his logic behind choking, he thinks that by being conveniently weak, he can receive the attention he seeks. Blazer states that "Victor puts himself on idealistic yet counterfeit display in an effort to gain compassionate recognition from the good Samaritan and the delusional and dying mother whose love that he craves" (153).
The young men realize the contentment of human affection and successfully break free from societal pressures and encounter reality. Although the narrator attempts to find his identity at fight club, he finally finds himself with the help of the only female character in the novel, Marla Singer. Jesse Kavaldo cleverly points out that "the narrator has to look past Tyler Durden's allure to find her" and "the desire to destroy himself is rendered another kind of fiction, replaced by his desire for Marla" (8). Because Tyler is actually the narrator's alter-ego, Marla is the only individual that develops a relationship with the narrator. Furthermore, her words telling him that "[he] is Tyler Durden…everybody knows [him as] Tyler Durden" provided as proof to the narrator that he was Tyler; this represents Marla's affection that helped the narrator grasp reality (Fight 172). The narrator later asks Marla to keep him awake to prevent Tyler from committing dangerous crimes, which also represents the mutual trust they have for one another. Marla also becomes the only person that "know[s] the difference" between Tyler and the narrator, and they both set out in attempt to establish their own genuine reality (Fight 205). Similarly, Victor learns that genuine human affection enables him to grasp his identity from the people closest to him; Denny and Paige Marshall. Palahniuk himself points out that his books are "about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people" (qtd. in Kavaldo 6), and he especially emphasizes Victor's transformation caused by his friendship with Denny in Choke. Although Denny is described by Victor as caring and dependent with "such an addictive personality", Denny becomes Victor's wake-up call to encounter reality more directly (Choke 189). Denny starts to collect rocks to symbolize days of his sobriety; however, these rocks symbolize so much more. These "rocks symbolize the concrete reality that is noticeably absent from these character's lives", and also symbolize hope (Blazer 154). The novel ends as Victor explains how he's going "to build a world out of rocks", implying that each 'rock of hope' adds to a bright future (Choke 292). Victor later describes how Denny's "skinny arms look big around" and how "his pinched shoulders spread wide" because "he's having to lift the stones a little higher…he's having to be stronger", when he realizes that Denny has slowly found reality and has made more progress than him (Choke 220). As Denny kindly reaches out for Victor and invites him to join the rock-stacking, Victor finally reaches the ultimate enlightenment that "[he's] not going to do [the] kind of shit [such as] choking in restaurants, fooling people,…sleeping around, [and] casual sex" (Choke 239). Paige Marshall, Victor's love interest, has a mental condition where she doesn't fully understand her identity. "Victor and Paige encounter the reality of each other and immediately decide to invent something better" and "join Denny's endeavor in an attempt to reverse the ruinous trajectory of their stories psyches" (Blazer 155). In the last scene of the novel, Paige asks Victor to take off her hospital bracelet, which symbolizes the eradication of identity decided by society. After the bracelet is taken off, "Paige and [Victor] just look[s] at each other, at who each other is for real", and they are successfully able to escape the hyperrealistic society by their genuine relationship (Choke 292). Victor's development of relationships with Denny and Paige enables him to "understand that only the human warmth of lasting relationships will provide him the peace he seeks" (Scott Yarbrough).
Although Palahniuk's works are well-known for its "bizarre premises,…black humor and cynical viewpoint", they have the overarching idea of love and need for affection ("Chuck 1962"). The hyperrealistic society that oppresses individuality and homogenizes individuals fails to allow individuals to have identities. Without identities, the protagonists fail to understand their purpose in life and to recognize their full potential. The protagonists attempt to escape the hyperrealistic society by exposing themselves to death, and they realize that only genuine relationships can enable them to achieve their real identities. Because Palahniuk is part of the Cacophony Society, a group of nihilists that have multiple bizarre events across the nation, many critics tend to automatically assume his novels resemble his views and opinions towards society. Although he denounces the materialistic, hyperrealistic culture, he offers affection as a solution to escape such a society in both novels.