Entry 5

Plot and Setting

This portion of the novel begins with the narrator on his way to Marla's house because she called him and was in distress so he thought he would check up on her. He goes to her and finds he laying on her bed in a robe and tells the narrator that she has found a lump on her breast but wanted a second opinion. She removes her clothes and brings the narrator's hand to her breast and he feels around with discomfort. He finds it. He is scared to tell her what he has found because she is rather depressed and cynical at the moment but he tells her. To make her laugh he tells her a story of how he once had a wart on his penis that he had to have removed.

Marla admits that this isn't actually the first lump she has found. She found some before and learned that they were cancerous which was when she began going to support groups. Other peoples death made her feel better about the death growing inside of her.

Tyler and the narrator are beginning to become more and more similar. They both seems to have the same attitude of being deferential towards everything. They both want Fight Club to be every night of the week and for there to be more Fight Clubs. Tyler thought of an idea of how they could do this. The narrator goes to his boss from the hotel that he works at and admits to him that he was been tainting the food. His boss tells him that he is going to be fired, but then the narrator begins to hit him self in the face. He begins to violently punch himself and starts screaming as if it were his boss that were doing the hitting. Within minutes the security guards walked in with the narrator bloodied with no one to take the blame but his boss. The narrator lost his job but isn't pressing charges on his ex-boss in exchange for full pay without going to work. This gave Tyler and the narrator the time and money for more Fight Club.

Character

We have begun to see some kind of connection between the narrator and Marla. Even thought he has hatred for her he seems to tend to her when she is in need which shows he does care for her. She loves to annoy him but always seems to enjoy his company no matter how much they seem to dislike one another. I almost seems as if Tyler and Marla have a sexual aspect of their relationship and the narrator and Marla have the emotional aspect of a relationship. It is almost as if Marla is with both Tyler and the narrator at the same time getting different things from each of them.

We also really start to see new similarities between Tyler and the narrator. They began so different from each other and now they seem to inch closer to almost being the same person. Even their injuries from Fight Club are the same. The thing that brings them closer is Fight Club which both of them revolve their lives around. Although we learn more about the narrator, Tyler has been very dormant in the recent events of the novel and has not really been involved in the events that are going on but is always mentioned by the narrator.

Marla is actually a real person with actual feelings! Up until now I thought she was just a piece of trash but it seems she lives a life of garbage because she is scared of death which has lead her to not care about many aspects of her life or the feelings of others.

Theme

A new theme that has shown to have a great role in this book is the influence of death. Marla lives her life in chaos because she is scared of the death that grows inside her all the time and we know that Marla will play a major role in how the narrator gets to where he was at the start of the book which is to found out through further readings. Furthermore the narrator lived his life around death because of the support groups he used to attend because the pain and death of those people somehow allowed him to sleep at night. Then because of this influence of death Marla and the narrator both attended these meetings which lead to their meeting. However, remember that the narrator said "It all began when I met Marla" so we know how important death really is in this novel.