Analysis of the Characters Tyler and Jack in Fight Club and Calvin and Hobbes the Philosophers - Assignment Example

The Characters Tyler and Jack In Fight Club And Calvin and Hobbes (The Philosophers and the Cartoon Characters Based Upon Them): A Comparison Analysis of literature in a creative way requires some seriousness of thought. Here it will be attempted to link excerpts from the script Fight Club and the philosophies of John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. 

The major link between the two will be demonstrated through the ethical and moral scruples of the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes, which will be described further in detail later on herein. The characters in Fight Club are supposed to mirror Calvin and Hobbes, and Calvin and Hobbes are supposed to mirror the philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. 

 One of the more amusing scenes in Fight Club is where Tyler and Jack are at a restaurant having a conversation about consumerism. This is a snippet from Tyler’s end of the conversation: “Its a blanket, just a blanket. Now why guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival? In the hunter-gathered sense of the word? No. What are we then?... Right. Were consumers.  Were by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty— these things dont concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guys name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”1 If one compares the main characters in Fight Club, Tyler and Jack, to the cartoon characters Calvin and Hobbes (which were based retrospectively on the philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes), one can see the obvious links between the two media on the subjects of consumerism, American culture, and the American dream. “Calvin and
Hobbes [was] a comic strip nationally syndicated from 1985 to 1995.” Here it will be examined that “…the content found in Calvin and Hobbes to determine underlying
messages concerning ethics and values.”2 Consumerism, in Fight Club, is seen as an obsessive quality. What really seems to “matter” is money. The American mindset is not focused on what the rest of the world is concerned about—survival. Rather, it is concentrated on name-brand products and who has the biggest toys in the sandbox. This points to an overall problem with the American cultural way of thinking. In general, Americans place too much emphasis on success by how much money one makes, what kind of car one drives, and so on and so forth. The fact is, Americans are driven by an inward-directed fear that they will not be financially successful and that is what drives Americans to be workaholics. What the cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes is really trying to chip away at is the fact that our values system as Americans is misplaced. While Calvin is a boy focused on playing and doing the things a boy likes to do, his friend and stuffed tiger Hobbes is just along for the ride—much like Tyler and Jack in Fight Club. Tyler, like Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes, is the sort of mastermind of the entity that is Tyler and Jack. Like Calvin has Hobbes as his rapt audience, Tyler has Jack at his whimsy while they are hanging out. Tyler is ready to spout off his ideas about consumerism which consume him—usually with little or no protest coming from Jack. Tyler takes the stage, and is completely emotionally invested in becoming the star of the show. Likewise, Calvin in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip is a rather industrious sort of fellow, who takes over the show and has a consumeristic approach in his dealings with Hobbes. He is out to exploit Hobbes as a friend mainly because he can. Hobbes, since he is a stuffed tiger, is helpless at the whim of Calvin. Similarly, this mirrors the philosophical bent and sheer brain power that Calvin the theologian and philosopher would have probably had over Hobbes the philosopher in real life were the twain to meet. For, Calvin has an excellent train of thought which would most likely outsmart Hobbes any day. For, although Hobbes may have been a great mind with regard to politics, Calvin would be able to take the moral high ground and deduce whether certain actions were sinful or not. This is where Hobbes and Calvin differ and contrast sharply. There is an underground fight club which Tyler created in order to retroactively fight consumerism. It was also created in order to be a springboard for Project Mayhem. Additionally, the fight club provided solace for Space Monkeys seeking a way to channel their frustrated energies. Tyler pontificates further on his feelings about the way things are going in the United States and basically with regard to American culture in general. He says: “Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential—God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables;  theyre slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit they dont need. We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. Weve all been raised by television to believe that one day well all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we wont. And were learning slowly that fact. And were very, very pissed off.”3 Here, we can see that Tyler is again becoming the center of attention. However, this is now not a focus on consumerism but on American culture. Calvin, in the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes, is an example for the masses. In one cartoon, Calvin is trying desperately to get some homework done and he asks Hobbes for help. Hobbes gives him the wrong answer, but Calvin hopes he will get points for “creativity.”4 In Tyler’s case, what seems to be the essence of Tyler’s speech is the lack of values America has. Calvin trying to cut corners on his homework is a prime example of the idea that “if I can’t do it, I can always find someone who will help me get the proper answer,” a form of learned helplessness. It is of singular importance for the viewer of Fight Club to realize that the working-class poor have little to hang on to when their lives and dreams are slowly being crushed in the gears of corporate America. It is necessary for readers of Calvin and Hobbes to understand that they just won’t get a free ride, either. Americans have to reevaluate their ideas of what they think matters in life, which means having realistic goals and thinking seriously about why one is here on the planet. Is one born to wait tables? Perhaps so—but if that is the case, it can be done with dignity, and there is more to that person’s life than just waiting tables. Also, there is this ingrained idea that we as Americans deserve the best because we are Americans, which is a faulty concept. That person may value things in life that are outside work which make life more fulfilling. John Calvin certainly would have placed a high value on the merits of hard work. While Hobbes may not have stressed that fact as much, he probably would have agreed that Americans have to examine their own inner motivation for doing things, which is not a common task to be doing nowadays. Calvin and Hobbes as a cartoon reaffirms in words what Fight Club shows and what these two philosophers would have thought—that our values must change. In the Fight Club, one of the obvious messages is that the American dream is fomented by the fact that so many people have a standard that they are willing to live up to which is unattainable. John Calvin, a strict theologian,5 probably would have rejected the notion that we all need to have large refrigerators, drive an SUV, and have remote-controlled TiVo. As for Thomas Hobbes, the “father of modern political thought,” he had a critical view of American scholastic thought.6 Hobbes, as the foil to Calvin, probably would have been in favor of all kinds of progress and competition that one sees in the ideal of the American dream: living in a large house with a walk-in closet and a white picket fence, owning a dog, and having 2.5 children. Hobbes would “…not think that we are basically or reliably selfish; and he [would] not think we are fundamentally or reliably rational in our ideas about what is in our interests.”7 Although it seems that Hobbes would disagree with the fact that people are totally immersed in their own selfish pursuits, it may be true that one should be unsure if the American dream would be something that he or she really wants, if that is the desired goal. Calvin the philosopher, on this point, would probably be rather base in his reaction and say that people are in fact sinful and would therefore flock to whatever their own needs are primarily. He would probably agree with Hobbes on the fact that people do not ultimately know what they really want, however. Calvin and Hobbes (both the philosophers and the cartoons) are like Tyler and Jack in that they give and they take with regard to various philosophical viewpoints. Calvin the boy and Tyler are the controlling and dominant personalities. Meanwhile, Hobbes the tiger and Jack are both at the mercy of their own counterparts. Like the philosophers Calvin and Hobbes, Tyler and Jack are both at each others’ counterpoints from a philosophical standpoint. While John Calvin is aloof, calculating, and cold in his estimations of people (as is Tyler), Hobbes is more of an unassuming philosopher with a laid-back personality, like Jack. On the following points, both Calvin and Tyler, like Hobbes and Jack, reflect the same values: consumerism, the American culture, and the American dream. While Tyler points out the faults of American society, Calvin is quick to exploit those faults. Hobbes and Jack are merely pawns to fomenting the ideas of their foils Calvin and Tyler. REFERENCES Coleman, Alisa White. "Calvin and Hobbes: A Critique of Societys Values.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Vol. 15, 2000. . Retrieved 20 April 2009. The Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy. John Calvin. . Retrieved 20 April 2009. The Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy. Thomas Hobbes. . Retrieved 20 April 2009. Uhls, Jim. Fight Club: The Final Screenplay, Part 3 (Based on the Novel by C. Palahniuk). 2008. 20 April 2009. . Uhls, Jim. Fight Club: The Final Screenplay, Part 1 (Based on the Novel by C. Palahniuk). 2008. 20 April 2009. . Welcome to Uffen.Org Web Site. Calvin and Hobbes Web Page. http://uffen.org/c_hobbes5.html. Retrieved 20 April 2009. Read More