Rock Bottom, Pt. 2

Sorry this took so long to put up, I've been swamped with work (I found a new job) and trying to learn this damned language.

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In Fight Club, “rock bottom” is a goal to aspire to, and once reached, gives absolute freedom. The conditions of "rock bottom" in both the book and song are at least closely related if not exactly the same:

"'I am trash,' Tyler said. ''I am trash and shit and crazy to you and this whole fucking world," Tyler said to the union president. "You don't care where I live or how I feel, or what I eat or how I feed my kids or how I pay the doctor if I get sick..."

Eminem expresses anger in his song because he doesn’t have a job, and because of that can’t provide for himself or for his family. The attitude echoed in Fight Club is quite the opposite:

"Getting fired [...] is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, we'd quit treading water and do something with our lives."

In Eminem's song, the rapper says (as quoted in the previous entry) that because of his horrible situation, he is forced to do terrible things, and he is angry because of that. In Fight Club, the circumstances are the same, but the narrator/protagonist feels opposite from Eminem; he feels strong and empowered.

"What Tyler says about the crap and the slaves of history, that's how I felt. I wanted to destroy something beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit [rock] bottom. Pounding that kid, I really wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every endangered panda that wouldn't screw to save its species and every whale or dolphin that gave up and ran itself aground."

The malicious things that the narrator feels inclined to do in Fight Club are accepted and spoken of with cool understanding, they’re even a sign that he’s moving in the right direction. The narrator is put down and ignored by society, he is cared about by no one and as a result has started to rebel in his own way. Whereas Eminem seems to hate his situation and what he's become, in FC, the characters are accepting the role that society has given, and are even diving deeper into it.

"If you could either be God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?"

"What's worse? Hell or nothing?"

The point-of-view expressed in the book is much more liberating and makes one feel unrestricted. Whereas Eminem seems as if he would do anything that he can in order to break free and live a life of normalcy, the characters in Fight Club treat hitting bottom as a difficult process, something that needs to be worked for, and that takes strength of character in order to achieve.

"Tyler says I'm nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don't fall all the way, I can't be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn't just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn't just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can't play it safe anymore.

...

'If you lose your nerve before you hit the bottom,' Tyler says, 'you'll never really succeed.'

...

'It's only after you've lost everything,' Tyler says, 'that you're free to do anything.'"

Final installment coming soon...