Character Analysis of Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (Paper Re-post)
Re-posting a paper I wrote for fun
Abstract
Fight Club is a satirical novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. It has also been adapted into a film of the same name. This paper delves into the complexity of the character known as Tyler Durden. The paper tries to use the lens of good and evil and understand Tyler’s actions. This would include his cult-like tendencies and self-destructive behaviour but also his critique of consumerism and search for meaning. His portrayal as a messiah for the ones who have been wronged by society or the ones who have lost meaning will be studied but also the resultant actions that were taken. This paper tries to see Tyler’s actions from Society’s perspective and also from his follower’s perspective. Both the positive and negative aspects and how they affect each other. It tries to work out the difference of opinion between both parties.
Keywords
Black Satire, Tyler Durden, Nihilism, Consumerism, Anarchy, Self-destruction, Good & evil.
Introduction
The term "cult film" or more commonly known as "cult classic" is used to describe a movie that has generated a significant and highly dedicated fanbase over time. (Collins) One such Cult Classic is Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. If one has to point out a reason for this film becoming a cult classic, then it has to be the character known as Tyler Durden. His unique personality and mindset set him apart from the rest of the crowd. This paper will attempt to understand the morality of the character through his actions and understand his good and bad aspects.
Consumerism
Tyler has no interest in material possession. For him, material possession is meaningless. However, the narrator is engulfed in consumerism as stated by him:
You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. . . Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you. (Palahnuik 29)
The idea of consumerism has been drilled into the minds of the American public which is stated well by George Carlin:
These people are efficient, professional, compulsive, consumers. It’s their civic duty, consumption. . . Buying things! x2. Spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need. . . So they can max out their credit card and spend the rest of their lives paying 18% interest on something that costs $12.50. And they didn’t like it when they bought it home anyway. (Carlin 7:26)
The narrator’s character behaves in the same way. However, Tyler critiques the narrator’s (and by extension the world’s) ideals of consumerism:
You have a class of young strong men and women. . . Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need. (Palahnuik 110)
For him, consumerism makes the population impotent, as the smartest and strongest men are pumping gas and waiting tables. (109) People want to do something with their lives. However, they have been programmed to chase material wealth. Tyler Durden wants to free the population from the misery of consumerism and provide them with meaning in their life. This could be considered a positive element of his character.
Project Mayhem
However, the way he decides to achieve this goal is through ’Project Mayhem’. By blasting the world free of history. (89) This is close to the idea of political nihilism. Where political constructs such as the state and social constructs around it are negated. (Gertz 84) Tyler then finds a solution and excecutes it via active nihilism. (Active and Passive Nihilism 10:18) The solution is to save the world by destroying it:
It’s Project Mayhem that’s going to save the world. A cultural ice age. A prematurely induced dark age. Project Mayhem will force humanity to go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover. (Palahnuik 89)
The goal was to teach each man in the project that he had the power to control history. That each of us can control the world. (87) He makes them believe this by making them part of something bigger i.e. Project Mayhem. Tyler becomes their cult leader and divides them into groups. Each group is turned into a committee and they are provided homework assignments. There are four committees, Arson, Assault, Mischief and Misinformation. (90) They perform various tasks to bring about the end of the world which ultimately culminates in their bombing of buildings. Specifically, the National Museum as it symbolises the destruction of history. (5)
Tyler sees the problem of consumerism, but his solution to it is to destroy society completely. To have a clean start. This is what turns him into a villain in the eyes of society.
Fight Club
Tyler and the narrator started Fight Club. Fight Club started because Tyler wanted to fight the narrator. However, Tyler just wanted to fight his father (37), whom he had never met. (34)
They both just wanted to fight and this provided some sort of catharsis for Tyler. Seeing both of them fight, other people joined in too. Men came to Fight Club because of something they are too afraid to fight. Fight club made them less scared. (38) It made the narrator tone-deaf, which he liked. (33) Fight Club provided a sort of enlightenment to the narrator. Nothing mattered to him. His face was all messed up and his shirt had blood stains on it. (43) But he didn’t care. It was Zen. The fighting made the narrator feel saved. And by extension, everyone in the club felt saved. It made the men feel alive (35) and that was only possible because of Tyler’s idea.
This Zen was not for free, as you could only get it through self-destruction. They had tried self-improvement and it didn’t help them. Hence they decided to try self-destruction. (34) What they were doing was a form of self-harm, but they enjoyed it. Tyler had convinced men that destroying themselves was a good thing. The narrator beat himself up. He was in such a bad condition that he described his eye sockets as two swollen-up bagels around little piss holes. (43) The people who came to Fight Club were in the same condition as the narrator could find accountants and junior executives or attorneys with broken noses spreading out like an eggplant under the edges of bandages or they have a couple of stitches under an eye or a jaw wired shut. (38)
It suffices to say that Tyler made people feel alive. But the cost of being alive was dying and being resurrected every evening. (12)
Freedom and Slavery
For Tyler, the world had enslaved people. So he wanted to provide freedom to men and women. However, ironically, he wanted to give freedom by enslaving the people. In Project Mayhem, he had brainwashed his cult members to say the things that he thought. To do the things that he wanted them to do. This was his idea:
We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them. (110)
So Tyler became the messiah of the people. He became the saviour the narrator needed (29). He removed the burden of individuality. You did not have to be special. Instead, for Tyler, you were the opposite. He had trained his cult members to accept the opposite:
"I am the all-singing, all dancing crap of this world," the space monkey tells the mirror. "I am the toxic waste byproduct of God’s creation." (119)
Tyler had freed them from the burden of being unique. From trying to be special. But this came at the cost of complete destruction of one’s self. The narrator states the example of his friend Bob. Bob’s once-sculpted hair was shaved off and his fingerprints had been burned off with lye. (125)
They were ready to die for the project, (90) but it was freedom for them. And to many, freedom is worth more than pain. Everyone dies sometime. So it’s better dying for a cause than to live a long, empty life. (Kaczynski 168) If Fight Club saved the people, then Project Mayhem provided meaning to their lives.
Vindication
Tyler’s group of vandals or better said, members of Project Mayhem are a special class of people. He explains this to the commissioner when he tries to stop their operation:
The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry. . .We control every part of your life. We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re just learning this fact. (Palahnuik 123)
Tyler says he stands for the people who are part of everyone’s life but are not accounted for. He has experienced life as these people as well. He has been a movie projectionist and a waiter. (14,15) The types of jobs he mentioned are all dehumanizing. They force you to fake yourself:
Services may still be provided with a smile, but not because they still represent a genuine human interaction, but because service industry workers are trained by bosses to smile to avoid being fired, and trained by customers to smile to earn a tip. (Gertz 142)
These people don’t do what they like. They labour only for the money. (140) Even though their jobs may be dehumanizing, a bad cook can ruin your day and a bad ambulance driver can ruin your life. Their contribution maybe significant, but they lack power. Society will not run without them but their individual worth is nothing. This is the type of meaninglessness that Tyler’s cult members lived through. And through Project Mayhem, through Tyler, they feel vindicated.
Conclusion
This paper was an analysis of Tyler’s actions and how they would be judged. On one side an outsider would consider Tyler a maniac trying to create an insurrection. But for the insider, he is not different from a God. He had a proper following and doctrine. Tyler could see the meaninglessness of the life that people followed. He hated how society had turned out and decided to destroy it to start anew. The people he gathered had no hope from society and hence turned to him.
In this scenario, both parties could not agree on Tyler’s morality. For Society, Tyler was bad because he wanted to destroy it. For his cult, he was good because society had wronged them and he sought to correct that. In the end, Tyler is just the voice of the narrator. Tyler or more specifically, the narrator represents the ’middle children’. He is a reactionary force that arose because of society itself. Because of the way he was treated. If society provided authentic meaning to people’s lives, then Tyler Durden wouldn’t have come into existence. So his actions are a direct consequence rather, a compensation for what society has done to man.
Works Cited:
Active and Passive Nihilism. 2012, uploaded by Academy of Ideas, Youtube. Last accessed: 23rd September, 2023. youtu.be/watch?v=mWnmC4PaHHs.
Carlin, George. LIfe is Worth Losing. 2005, Chapter: Dumb Americans. Uploaded by Frustrated Idealist, Youtube. Last accessed: 7th September, 2023. youtu.be/watch?v=-pz8jO2Sht0.
Collins, Sophie. “Cult Classics Explained: How a Movie Fits the Definition,” Aug. 2023, Last accessed: 7th September, 2023, movieweb.com/what-is-a-cult-classic/.
Gertz, Nolen. Nihilism (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series). The MIT PRESS, 2019.
Kaczynski, Theodore. Industrial Society and its Future. 1995, Last accessed: 23rd September, 2023. web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/ethics/Unabomber.pdf.
Palahnuik, Chuck. Fight Club. W. W. Norton, 1996