Fight Club
⛰What It's About
Fight club's about someone (no name mentioned) who suffers from insomnia and midlife crisis. He lives a stereotypical life, in which he toils to earn money in order to buy things that the society has deemed necessary. He gets to know Tyler Durden who's more of a charismatic person than he is. They create fight club together which develops, as time goes by, into a huge destructive project, which is project mayhem, with devastating aims.🧠Thoughts
Self Destruction
“Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.”
Tyler thinks that man improves himself because of pain and sacrifice. You improve in something by experiencing difficulties and not by taking the easy short path. For example, when you hit the gym, your muscles aches but this makes you stronger. You should feel the pain (or as Tyler labels it: self-destruction) and you should be comfortable with it because this is what makes you a better person.
Hitting Rock Bottom and Freedom
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
Tyler believes that one has to hit rock bottom in order to be free to do anything. Tyler wanted the narrator to hit rock bottom when he kissed the narrator's hand and poured a caustic chemical over it. Tyler's kiss marks all the members of project mayhem; it means that whoever got this scar is a member of Tyler's chaotic world. Hitting rock bottom is like a ceremony to join project mayhem and Tyler's army after proving loyalty and blind following.
Tyler also wanted the narrator to hit rock bottom when he sent the mechanic with a Cadillac to pick the narrator up and head over to the highway. The mechanic started swerving the car and switch to the opposite lane on a high speed. Note that this scene was changed in the movie; Tyler himself was the one driving the car not the mechanic.
Civilization Destruction
Tyler believes that civilization should be completely destroyed to start over again and build a new decent civilization. His goal is achieved by firstly founding fight club, then project mayhem.
Tyler's followers in project mayhem were called space monkeys. They're just like monkeys which were sent to space. Tyler says
"Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice... we would have nothing."
Project mayhem's space monkeys were ordinary people who had simple jobs like serving tables as waiters for example. Although each one of them is almost negligible, but without them, we'd be nothing; our life just can't go on without them. Also, these guys should be obedient as space animals which were sent to space while they weren't aware what they were doing; they just did it. Tyler wanted people like this. He wanted people who would obey him and do one two three without questioning him. However, in obeying Tyler the space monkeys gain freedom from their old lives. In their former lives they were already obedient workers, but their obedience had no point. Now their work and their sacrifice have a purpose, to "break up civilization so we can make something better of the world."
"You just do your little job"
Consumer Society
Tyler Durden regularly inserted pornographic frames in the movie reel at cinemas so that viewers could see the pornographic frame for less than a split second in order to make viewers reflect on the frame and whether what they saw was true or not. Likewise, the ads that we see on a daily basis in our consumer society appear for a couple of minutes then leave us with the thought of the that product and wanting to buy it even after a long time since we've seen the ad. Fight club is a place for people who are sick of the consumer society. They come to fight club to express their anger and fury towards life. In fight club, your problems aren't solved but they are forgotten and you feel like a warrior in the face of these problems.
Why does Tyler smoke?
Tyler and the Narrator (spoilers ahead)
Situations demonstrating similarities between the narrator and Tyler
Tyler meets with the head of the cinema, and learns that he’s being laid off. Tyler thinks about the single frames of pornography he’s spliced in to hundreds of movies over the years. He talks his union into sending him a monthly paycheck to keep quiet about this fact. Similarly, the novel involves Tyler and the narrator working at a fancy hotel’s buffet for rich people. Tyler pisses in the soup and puts his penis in the desert. He once put a note to some lady saying that he peed in one of her many fancy perfumes. The narrator goes to one of the managers and tells him that he's going to tell the press about it and make a scandal (although he’d go to prison after it). He demands money in order not to do so.
Tyler asks the narrator not to talk with Marla Singer about him. He was afraid that the narrator could uncover the truth and know that Tyler is the same person as himself. That also explains why the first two rules of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
Tyler founded numerous fight clubs across the country. That's why the narrator would wake up in another city not knowing how he got there. The narrator's attempt to shut down fight club failed miserably because Tyler gave the organization a leaderless structure. He also knew that eventually the narrator would discover the truth and try to sabotage project mayhem's plans, so he told the project's members not to listen to his own words if he tells them to stop.
In a hundred cities, fight club goes on without me.
When the narrator's asleep, Tyler's awake controlling his body and doing whatever he likes to do. That's why the narrator always woke up feeling so tired and exhausted that he thinks he hasn't slept at all.
Tyler was supposed to be everything the narrator wanted to be. But we discover that Tyler not only had the narrator's ideal attributes like courage, but also has his worst attributes more prominently.
Book vs Movie (spoilers ahead)
In the book, Tyler’s initial plan is to remain inside the skyscraper as it explodes. His thought process is that it would turn him into a martyr for the cause. It’s a complex situation because The Narrator realizes his plan and tries to stop it, even though Tyler only exists in his head. Tyler's plan didn't work due to the use of wrong chemicals and the book ends with the narrator in a mental institution after shooting himself in the cheek. Various members of Project Mayhem are still carrying out the wishes of Tyler Durden, eagerly awaiting his return.
The film shows The Narrator and Marla watching the success of Project Mayhem from a distance, with its explosion not impacting them at all. In the book’s ending The Narrator is trapped, not freed. He thought that he got free from fight club, project mayhem and space monkeys but it turns out not to be the real case.
Conclusion
The book doesn't call for anarchy or mayhem, but it calls for revolting against the standards that are put by the society and asking oneself "what am I doing with my life?" and "Why I'm doing what I'm doing?" The narrator had a decent job which offered him a great deal of money and a decent condo. However, he wasn't happy. He was so busy chasing the standards put by the society and buying new furniture, clothes and travelling to new places. The society has set the norm that good clothes and a decent job, for example, are the way to a happy life. But our narrator was never happy with is life whatsoever! He really found himself firstly when he joined support groups and secondly when he founded fight club alongside Tyler Durden. Only then did he feel happy.
