Tender Barnson is a man who throughly disturbs me. In the beginning of the book, he hijacks an airplane, so that he can tell his life story to the black box. He was raised in a cult where he had no rights, because he was born three minutes later than his brother. This creedish death cult, to which Barnson belongs, has several bizarre restrictions, such as not eating refined sugar and not listening to radios. Being second born, he is forced to leave the community and work in the outside world. His phone number is mistakenly advertised as a suicide-help hot line, and he tells the people that call him, that they should kill themselves. While Barnson is in the outside world, the rest of his creedish comrades deliver themselves to heaven by killing themselves. As a result, he is given a disturbing caseworker, because he is deemed a suicide risk. After awhile, she begins to encourage Barnson to kill himself, because she is tired of dealing with him. At the same time Barnson is infatuated with a girl named Fertility. Her brother is one of the people who committed suicide with his help. Tender Barnson additionally works as a servant for two bankers and uses fake flowers stolen from a mausoleum to decorate his employer’s garden.
Chuck Palahnick’s book Survivor is very hard to understand for two reasons. First, it is written backwards and secondly, he likes to use very annoying word loops like, “the megaphone said”, to repeatedly start sentences. I do not understand what this confusing book has to do with the class topic games.
