Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk is a seductive novel that chronicles an unnamed narrator's ability to cope with an emasculated, self-centered, materialistic society by creating an alter ego. Throughout the text, the theme of the emasculated modern man is presented in both the narrator's life and that of the male characters he surrounds himself with. Through notions of absent fathers, consumerism, and a harmless, aimless existence, Palahniuk presents how men in modern society have lost their masculine identity and the extreme actions they take to gain it again. Dwarfed by their absent fathers, broken families, and a female-centered society, the men of Fight Club present an incisive notion of the lives of modern men. Without an outlet for expression, the modern man is, in all aspects of his life, physically emasculated and emotionally castrated. Palahniuk represents the cultural loss of male identity in the second chapter of the text. A group of men sit together in a support group, helping each other deal with the emasculation they are destined to face. The support group, “The Remaining Men Together,” is for testicular cancer, which means that the reunited men are literally castrated. The men featured in the group also struggle with emotional castration. One man, “Big Bob,” turns out to be a former body builder (a rather masculine profession) who abused steroids: he traded his “huevos” for “whore tits” (Palahniuk 21). Bob has also been divorced three times and is now "bankrupt [with] two grown children who [won't] return his calls" (22). Big Bob and the rest of the group are emasculated and return to emotional release, crying and group hugs, as a form of therapy. An emotional release such as crying is… at the center of the paper… the world free from history” (124) and creates a new order in which men are prominent. Similar to the Fight Club experience, the men of the new order must rely on instinct and strength to succeed. Therefore the ability to endure pain is a way to gain power and masculinity. Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is the story of the emasculated man living in the postmodern world. Without a father to raise him, he is left to fend for himself. The adult man will eventually succumb to what culture tells him a man is, often relying on materialistic possessions to define his identity. As a result, postmodern man becomes a slave to the social order and power relations of conventional society. Although he adapts to this society, the emasculated man is unhappy with his harmless existence. Fight Club, however, is the means by which he can restore his masculine identity.