Tyler Durden's Dream in Fight Club
In the Movie Fight Club, we are introduced to an eccentric soap salesman named Tyler Durden. Tyler is the alter ego, I guess you could say, of the main character Jack. Jack and Tyler start an underground bare-knuckle boxing club that, "channel primal male aggression into a shockingly new form of therapy." These men are not just fighting for sport, but are actually trying to find meaning to their lives. So they look to Tyler, a childish leader, who believes in the purity of impulse and expression, while trying to escape from material possessions.
Tyler shows us his childish behavior by the mischief he always seems to be getting into. Tyler spends his nights making his own formula soap, which doubles as dynamite, and working odd jobs. He has a night job as a part time projectionist, where he gets his kicks out of splicing single frames of pornography into family films. He is also on probation from another job, as a banquet waiter at a five-star hotel, "over the urine content of their clam chowder." These jobs actually seem to be a form of self-expression for him.
Violence is another unique form of Tyler's expression. He tries to use violence of fight club to get his followers to open their eyes and see their life. "How much can you know about your self and never been in a fight." Once they start thinking about their life, they don't always like what they see. That's when all of Tyler's little sayings start to make sense. Tyler calls these sayings durdenisms.
Durdenisms like, "you are not the contents of your wallet" or "Its only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything," Are the sayings that his following start to live their lives by. He is trying to get them to change their lives to live ore freely, but Tyler believes that a person can never be free until they have escaped from the control of material possessions.
Tyler is trying to escape from material possessions because all he sees is people living life according to what they have to buy next, "We are consumers. We are by products of a lifestyle obsession." TV commercials and magazines have defined they way America should and has to be.
...ut Jake in a confused state of his life. His love has always been the river, giving him hope, peace, friendship, brotherhood, and love. The river gave him everything but has now taken away his only brother for no reason at all. No matter how much he tries to get away from his past, the river is his life and has become his home.
Jason pictures himself in a world where he won’t be distracted, which will give him the opportunity to focus and achieve his goals. He started thinking about it, planning what he’ll do and how he’s going to make the best out his second chance. “He won’t be like his dad, he thinks, he won’t waste his chances. He’ll grab what comes and run with it” (Allison 34). It will be all about him and the basement, who he will become, who he was meant to become. “In the basement, they won’t feed him much, so he will get all dramatic skinny. He could learn to eat imaginary meal meals and taste every bite-- donuts and hot barbecue wings and stay all skinny and pure. He’s going to come out that basement Brad-Pitt handsome and ready for anything” (Allison 34-35). In his mind, these are all the opportunity that he’ll get to become who he wants to be.
...e thing. Mark Renton learns that the life he once thought of as boring is actually preferable to a life of addiction. From this one can learn not to, similar to the gangster world, romanticize drug culture and the drug world.
In the current age of technology and capitalism, many people get caught up in trying to define their individuality with mass produced goods. In David Fincher's movie Fight Club, the narrator, who is commonly referred to as Jack, invents an alter ego to serve as a source of substance in the hallow world of corporate America. This alter ego, named Tyler Durden, is portrayed as a completely psychologically and physically separate being throughout the movie. The inherent polarity in personality between these two personas proves to be a crucial point of interaction between the two characters, and is the basis for most of the action in the movie. Thus, Fight Club depicts the necessity for a balance between the passive and aggressive aspects of the human psyche, which parallels the main theme and insights that are illustrated in Judith Cofer's "The Other."
Fincher established a “nemesis trope” by figuratively expressing the inescapable agent of the unnamed narrator’s downfall through another character, Tyler Durden. The unnamed narrator is presumed to be the protagonist antihero of the film, Jack. Jack, who is portrayed in the earlier scenes of the film as a typical consumer is later “saved” by Tyler; an anti-consumerist who takes it upon himself to destroy all of Jack’s belongings. Durden strongly believes that the things you own, end up owning you, and that it is only after you've lost everything that you are free to do anything. It is through Tyler’s act of salvation that Jack is lead to his impending doom. Tyler helps Jack live his life through “fight club”, a place where men can figuratively liberate themselves from the consumerist culture by fighting each other. The ideas of fight club escalate into a national “gang” of radical men, who take it upon themselves to free the rest of the nation through crime. Jack begins to hate the person Tyler has turned him into, and attempts to terminate the grand radical scheme. Through this attempt Tyler ultimately becomes Jack’s nemesis trope.
This means standing up for what you believe in, and going with your gut. Coach Boone often stands up for his opinion against racism and eventually, the town stands up against racism. However, the most prominent example from the movie are the white football players standing up for their African American friends back at school. After a two week football practice camp in Pennsylvania, the African Americans and whites have blended, and they are all friends. But when they get back to school, nothing has changed; racism is still very much alive. But, the white football players do not turn their backs on their African American football friends, even if their school friends say to. Eventually, they turn the whole town around to see their point of view. As Coach Boone said in the locker room right before their championship game, “You’ve taught this city how to trust the soul of a man rather than the look of him,”. This shows being true to one’s self because they had now realized that racism was wrong, and by sticking up for their opinion, they are being to true to themselves and they convince the whole town. An aspect of character in "Remember the Titans" is being true to one’s self because it shows that they stick with their gut tells them what is right and were true to themselves about their feelings toward
from making financial stability, or the American Dream. Its main focus is on Walter's effort to
"What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women . . .. I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need." These words are from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club. Tyler Durden is the alter ego, and only known name of the fictional narrator of the novel. Tyler suffers from Dissociative Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Primary Insomnia, and probably a host of other disorders that I am not qualified to properly diagnose.
The main themes of the story are loneliness, materialism, and freedom from society. Tyler was created because of the lack of connection the narrator had with the people around him. The narrator was lonely and attended so many support groups because of it. He was not rejected at the support groups because the members thought he was sick just like they were. Materialism is a reoccurring theme as the narrator mentions how he has worked his entire life for the Ikea items in his apartment. He tried to fill the void in his life by buying worthless, meaningless stuff. People spend too much time working for things they do not need. The narrator comes to the conclusion that, “You are not your job or your possessions.” Only once a person realizes that can he or she finally let go and start living. “It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.” In order to be free, we must not care about the stuff we own. Our whole lives are spent working to pay for stuff. If we did not have stuff to pay for, we would not have to work as hard and our time could be spent doing something more meaningful.
The two live together and form a quick bond. They start a “fight club” where men can escape the real world. It is a very secretive club “The first rule of fight club is we do not talk about fight club”. As the movie goes on, the club becomes more of a cult and the tasks that they have to complete become more difficult and more dangerous. Soon we learn that our noname character has an alter-ego and it is…Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden is everything he wants to be. Because he lives a so called respectable life he lets himself go through his alter-ego. All the mayhem that happens is all really because of him. Our “average Joe” is the cause of all the “fight clubs” across the nation.
Jefferson, T. (1996). From “little fairy boy”to the “compleat destroyer”: subjectivity and transformation in the biography of Mike Tyson. Understanding Masculinities, 281–301.
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever” (Lance Armstrong). Men have given up, making the pain prevalent and everlasting, causing feminine tendencies. The men in this respective novel don’t have any opposition standing in their way, to prove their masculinity. “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” (Chuck Palahniuk). Proving your masculinity used to not be a problem. It was simple to prove your manhood by various ways throughout time such as; hunting, joining the
Others often use masculinity, most often associated with strength, confidence and self-sufficiency to define a man’s identity. The narrator perceives Tyler Durden as a fearless young man who is independent and living life by his own rules. So is Tyler Durden masculine because of his no nonsense attitude or are his law breaking antics and unusual lifestyle seen as a failure because he is a man with neither family, money nor a well respected job? These typical aspirations are commonly defined as the male American dream, but does following life by the rulebook placed on males by society really make a male masculine? Fight Club specifically debunks the male American dream. It challenges’ the idea that the masculine identity is defined by material items and instead embraces the idea that masculine identity can be found in liberation from conformity and the ability to endure pain.
Ruddell, Caroline. "Virility and vulnerability, splitting and masculinity in Fight Club: a tale of contemporary male identity issues." Extrapolation 48.3 (2007): 493+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Dec. 2013.
Throughout Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, masculinity is a reoccurring theme that is present throughout the novel and is directly linked to the creation of Fight Club in the first place. After meeting Tyler Durden, the narrator’s masculinity and outlook on life starts to dramatically change. In result of this change, the theme of masculinity becomes very disastrous throughout the novel very quickly because Palahniuk uses masculinity in order to explain the many problems the consumer driven males may struggle with. In this case, the narrator’s masculinity is constantly in question because of his struggles with insomnia, consumer driven lifestyle, and Marla Singer.