In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, the tyranny is the soul-destroying life of modern western society. The protagonist rebels against this by organising atavistic bare-knuckle fights and then by leading Project Mayhem to destroy civilisation. This story developed themes of alienation and anti-consumerism seen in earlier works such as Rebel without a Cause and The Prisoner with the epic, millennial quality of other contemporary works such as The Matrix.