Fight Club

The American Dream is a prime example of what Jean-Francois Lyotard calls a “grand narrative” in his 1979 text The Postmodern Condition. Lyotard describes a grand narrative as a larger, over-arching story that an individual uses to make sense of their own personal life. In the American Dream, the individual prescribes to the idea that if they follow certain steps and make the right choices, they will find happiness in love, family, and career. Narrative  like the American Dream are self-fulfilling power structures, and an individual may blame themselves for not feeling happy when it is the system that is flawed because it cannot deliver the happiness it promises. Fight Club relates to Lyotard’s critiques. The Narrator looks to his absent father for advice and is fed the standard-issue answers the social narrative wants him to pursue, such as he should go to college, get a career, find a wife, and so on. He also accumulates material goods to create for himself the perfect home, an impulse which emerges from the materialistic culture he lives in. Advertising does not flaunt a product so much as it generates desire; the Narrator does not really want an object, he wants its implicit promise of fulfillment.