universality. Through the original interpretation of the term, it refers to a religious process
aiming the full recovering of the original shape of a man (Koenig 2012). However, after
further evolvement of the term, the conception of “spirituality” develops a new connota-
tion, which denotes a range of experience in quest of the “deepest values by which people
live” (Sheldrake 2007). Although both interpretations emerged in association with the
contemporary religion, each of them can be seen from certain aspects of life.
Among the various implications, the one most resembling the literal meaning of
“spirituality”, which refers to the experience seeking the deepest values of human nature
(Sheldrake 2007), is revealed with the most conspicuousness through the protagonists of
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Before the outrageous yet “brave new” act, the anony-
mous narrator lives a life with seemingly no worth for living. Overwhelmed by the excru-
ciating insomnia, the narrator even regards his favorite part in life as the depressing scene
while he is being held and crying with Big Bob without hope, thinking about the thorough
breakdown of his life into oblivion (Palahniuk, 17). This is when his spirituality emerges
as a salvation pulling him out of the depressing, endless days of hard word (Palahniuk,
18). In other word, his secondary personality, which is regarded as a friend by the narrator,
appears and serves as an outlet for the narrator’s intensified desire to seize the innermost
value of his life. By demanding that “I want you to hit me as hard as you can” (Palahniuk,
46), Tyler intends to break through the societal constraints, experience the most raw and
real self, and thus fill up the lack in their spiritual pursuit resulting from their fixed paths
imposed by the society. This pursuit for spirituality intensifies throughout the elapse of
time. Tyler founds the institution of fight club, which both functions as an asylum free of
societal shackles where “everything in the real world gets the volume turned down”
(Palahniuk, 49) and a place for men to capture and comprehend their true power that “one
isn’t alive anywhere like he is alive at fight club” (Palahniuk, 51). Tyler pours lye on the
narrator’s hand, inflicting pain “worse than a hundred cigarettes” (Palahniuk, 73) and a
scar representing “the greatest moment in his life” (Palahniuk, 75). He ejaculates into the
tomato soup with the belief that “getting fired is the best thing that could happen to any of
them since that way they’d quit treading water and do something with their lives” (Palah-
niuk, 83). He establishes Project Mayhem where people risk their lives to accomplish “the
complete and right-away destruction of civilization” (Palahniuk, 125). Just as declared by
Tyler that “I just don’t want to die without a few scars” (Palahniuk, 48), the protagonists