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Mehmet Mert Akta

Mr. Mustafa Nakeeb
HUM 111-7
17 June 2016
Men's longing for primitivity
In his book Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud theorizes that one of the main sources
of the modern, civilized people's suffering and unhappiness is civilization itself. According to
Freud, suppression of our natural instincts by civilization or renouncement of natural instincts to
be civilized causes dissatisfaction with life and unhappiness in modern people (37-52). Once
Freud's theory is well understood, the famous motion picture Fight Club and the ancient artwork
The Epic of Gilgamesh can be analyzed in a profound way. The struggle of individuals,
especially men, with the society is themed in both works. Fight Club interrogates the modern
society's lifestyle and it is important how the movie describes the lifestyles of modern men which
are heavily influenced by advertisements to work harder and harder to buy luxurious things that
are not necessities. In the movie, the narrator, whom I call 'Jack' henceforth, undergoes various
changes in his attitudes because of his natural instincts' contention with the lifestyle imposed on
him by the society. Similarly, in the epic the main characters Gilgamesh and Enkidu experience
alike changes in their lives because of the dissatisfaction with the civilized lifestyle that Freud
describes. Further in this essay, several connections about the ideas of society and the characters
in each work will be made, and these deductions will help us understand the development of
men's characters in relation to human society and culture.
At the beginning of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the civilization that is present in the city of
Uruk is described. The structures in the city for instance, the walls of Uruk are described in

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detail and we can infer from the tone of the writing that the narrator is proud of the civilized city
they built (George 1-12). The idea of civilization in the epic is mostly related to the construction
of the city. Similarly, the description of civilization takes place at the beginning of Fight Club.
Jack tells the audience about his job, lifestyle, and the items in his house (Fincher, Fight Club).
Unlike in the epic, civilization is heavily under the influence of consumerism in the movie.
However, an indirect connection can be made between the ideas of civilization in the two works:
the constructions that are described early in the epic can be regarded as the materials we have in
modern society, materialism is related to civilization in each work. Nevertheless, in the modern
society that is described in Fight Club, the effect of materialism on the society is much more
apparent than in the epic, because companies prevail over the society in the movie and people
become unconscious consumers through the advertisements, the things people own end up
owning them as Tyler, Jack's alter ego, says. The common feature of the civilization in both
works is that it suppresses the natural instincts of men, although in the movie the suppression
occurs through the imposition of the image of modern men on men and in the epic it occurs
directly through living in a city in which people build structures instead of living in wild.
Both Gilgamesh and Jack are not ordinary men who live in conformity with the society at
the beginnings of their stories, they have some abnormalities in advance. Gilgamesh is a selfordained king who harasses and dominates his people, he "lets no daughter go free to her
mother". In turn, Aruru, the goddess of creation, creates Enkidu to who Gilgamesh is supposed to
channel his anger. Enkidu, at first, is purely wild, savage man who lives in a forest just like an
animal (George 1-12). Therefore, one can maintain that both Gilgamesh and Enkidu are wild and
uncivilized characters at the beginning. Similar to Gilgamesh, at the beginning of Fight Club,
Jack is also not get used to maintaining a civilized life, he suffers from chronic insomnia so

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does Gilgamesh at the beginning of the epic and is in a state of depression. Gilgamesh, Enkidu,
and Jack go through a humanization process after various experiences. Enkidu becomes civilized
after he has sex with a prostitute named Shamhat for seven days, Jack temporarily gets out of
depression when he starts to visit various support groups and meets Robert Bob Paulson, and
Gilgamesh becomes more human when he and Enkidu establish a friendship. Shamhat's role in
humanization indicates that women are prone to be more civilized than men in the ancient
civilization. At the end of Fight Club, Jack also backs to normal from insanity thanks to a
woman, Marla who caused Jack to suffer insomnia again after he found relief thanks to the
support groups (Fincher, Fight Club). The changes that Jack undergoes in the course of the
movie are not linear, Bob is the first one humanizing him; but, Marla ruins everything and he
finds another solution to his modern life problems. Jack creates his alter ego, Tyler. Tyler is
driven by his instincts, being primitive is the solution to Jack's problems in his previous boring
life. Modern men seek what they lost because of civilization, their manhood and power in
primitive times, that is why they join the fight club rejecting the image of modern men imposed
on them. The reason why Gilgamesh insists on killing Humbaba, the guardian of the Cedar
Forest, have parallels with Jack's motivation to create a fight club. Through a fight with
Humbaba, Gilgamesh wants to gain the power he had before the coming of Enkidu, and Enkidu
also encourages him to fight Humbaba when Gilgamesh fears, although Enkidu advises against
the fight in advance, an indication that Enkidu is longing for his roots (George 12-22). However,
Gilgamesh and Enkidu bring wood from the forest to the city to build a door for the temple of the
god Enlil, they also pay regard to the benefit of society, this is not the case in Fight Club. Project
Mayhem is created by Tyler or Jack to destroy civilization through the collapse of main
banking buildings and it serves to the individual instincts of its attendants. However, the

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attendants believe that the only way to freedom of the individuals is the destruction that the
Project Mayhem will cause. Therefore, we can say that Project Mayhem is not for the benefit of
society but for the benefit of individuals. A benefit may be the power men lost, another benefit
may be fame. Thus, there is always primitive instincts accompanying the reason, and the creation
of Fight Club and the fight of Gilgamesh with Humbaba are the consequences of the domination
of instincts over reason, or id over ego by using Freudian terminology, and it is crucial to
comprehend that ego represents the civilization because it is modified directly by the influence of
external world.
The development of characters Jack and Gilgamesh in relation to the society they live in
resembles each other, the effects of civilization on their attitudes are analogic despite the
difference in the features of the civilizations in each story. Although there are thousands of years
between the two artworks and the civilization's level of development in the year 1999 is
unimaginably higher than the ancient times, it can be said that Fight Club is the modern version
of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

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Works Cited
Fight Club, Fincher, D. 20th Century Fox, 1999. DVD
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its discontents. Broadview Press, 2015. Print.
George, A. R., trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in
Akkadian and Sumerian. London: Penguin, 1999. Print.