Protagonists Fighting for Their Identity in Fight Club and American Psycho

Abstract

Both novels Fight Club and American Psycho have similar themes in their narrative, but their actual connectedness has never been explored. When put side by side, their protagonists’ issues appear to stem from the same problem: they are both overwhelmed by the increasing amount of input from their surroundings. So much so that they conflate their identity with their possessions. Or, in Butlerian terms, their identity is no longer performative, but acquisitive: the main characters no longer identify through their actions, but through their consumption. This causes a mental detachment from the world called derealisation, which alienates and forces them to resort to violence to connect with their environment. The derealisation also causes a form of unreliability to appear in the novels, as the main characters start to fall apart more and more. This is an examination of how the protagonists react to such stressful environments, according to their respective novels Fight Club and American Psycho.