Abstract
The main focus of this essay will be to discuss how Chuck Palahniuk presents gender in three of his books: Fight Club, Invisible Monsters and Diary, and how his presentation of gender often involves the deconstruction of such terms. My aim is to show how Palahniuk deals with different aspects of gender in American society, be it the dichotomous relationship between femininity/masculinity and gay/straight, and also to show how his writing unearths an underlying critique of American society as a whole. The chapters will focus on the main characters of the three novels; depicting the characters’ journey to achieving both physical and spiritual freedom, and thus authenticity, by deconstructing normative notions of gender. The binary categories of gender have come to serve as a means of structuring society in a convenient and simple way, yet complicating the situation for those who fall on the outside of such categories. My aim, then, is to show how the shunning of the binary gender categories ultimately leads to reconnection between humans and a restoration of individuality for the characters. By going beyond the limitations of the body, Palahniuk’s texts opens up an exploration of a world that goes beyond categorization, labels, class and race, thus displaying the ultimate beauty in difference. The three chapters are structured around several aspects of each novel that I claim are the main arguments used by Palahniuk to represent his view on gender in American society.