Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Pressure of societal conformity leading to existential disillusionment -…
Pressure of societal conformity leading to existential disillusionment
Literary
Extract: Mrs Faust
1) Need for external validation (sc) causing eagerness to take extreme measures for material success (ed)
"I've sold my soul"
Biblical Allusion (reference to the devil)
Willingness to sacrifice: Soul trade = moral corruption
"gagging for it, going for it, rolling in it"
Enjambment
Past Participle
Epistrophe
Highlight the excess which characterises Faust's lifestyle
2) Always needing more (ed) despite his "success" from his sacrifice
"Enough? Encore!"
Hedonistic Spiral, Insatiability
Sarcastic Tone
Absurdity of his rapid progression
Defying physics
Surpassing god
Mocking capitalist greed
Encore: an additional performance given at the end of a larger performance
"the clever, cunning, callous bastard
didn’t have a soul to sell…"
guttural alliteration
tricolon
paralellism to previous mention
almost complimentary
Has no telos or animus despite his material success
Body Of Work
War Photographer
Society’s demand for consumption of suffering vs. photographer’s trauma
"A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six"
Juxtaposition of agony vs. casual selection → trivialization of deep suffering, minimizes pain, turning trauma into consumable content
Cynicism from the War Photographer due to dystopian nature of society's indifference to suffering
The Human Bee
Despite corporate success
"I could not fly and I made no honey"
Zoomorphism
Internal discontentment
Non literary
Extract
Suppression of primal human instincts
Causing scepticism towards societal norms in place (disillusionment)
"Fuck, you're right"
Despite having lost all his worldly possessions just hours ago, which made him almost "complete" (line 1), but so willing to reconsider his life's perspective just half-way through a conversation with a stranger
Vulgar language in casual dialogue, unrestriction of the self
Violence as a medium of reexploration of the self
"I want you to hit me as hard as you can"
Juxtaposition between civil conversation and violence
Escalation from conversation about identity to active, risky action
Representative of release from societal conformity
Work
Fragmentation of Identity
Unreliable narration
dramatizes psychological split caused by repression
Contrast
Jack
Name not known
Representative of average working man
Tyler
Medium of change for protagonist from existential disillusionment
Rash, captivating,
Projection of suppressed instincts
Erasure of identity under societal conformity
"An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars... working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
monologue
Hyperbole + social commentary → frustration at wasted lives
Introduction
Carol Ann Duffy
World Renowned famous poet laurette
uses satire, irony, and dramatic monologues
poems told from alternative perspectives
David Fincher
Filmmaker known for exploring alienation, consumerism, and psychological conflict
Conclusion
Societal conformity consistently undermines individuality and authenticity.
Duffy’s poems reveal how greed, consumerism, and duty strip life of deeper meaning, leaving characters disillusioned.
Fincher’s Fight Club highlights the same pattern, where consumer culture and repressed instincts fragment identity and fuel frustration.
Together, the texts show that when society imposes rigid expectations, individuals lose purpose, leading to existential disillusionment.