Fight Club - When does life have no purpose?

David Fincher’s Fight Club is a narrated movie that explains the journey of the narrator’s mid-life crisis; the movie begins with the ending scene, a microscopic view of a gun inside of the narrator’s mouth. All of the particles and germs are very visible to give the viewer an idea of what to expect. This scene suggests a dirty, winding, and emotional journey that the narrator will take. The narrator at first finds himself with insomnia. At the same time he is obsessed with consumer goods–he buys complete sets of everything. He works for a major automobile company as an agent who decides whether the cost of a recall is cheap enough to make profit. His job significantly sets up his depressed life. Day after day he travels to examine cars in accidents with remains of human dead burned to the seats. It is his job by which he feels so burdened, and he seems to try to get away from it by buying furniture. The story revolves around these three examples. The gun is full of bacteria; furniture is bought by money, a dirty obsession, and his job deals with car accidents. The Narrator has surrounded himself with consumer goods to occupy and satisfy himself, but when they can no longer satisfy him he breaks down emotionally.

Although David Fincher put significance on soap as being a major part of the movie, it doesn’t relate to every instance that it should. In this movie, soap is used to cleanse the body of luxury goods. Fight Club is all about eliminating things that aren’t necessary. Soap cleanses, and several times soap is not used. When they are fighting in the fight club, blood is a dominant image. It is a sign of being able to let go of all your material goods, if you can let go of your physical health. Here soap has no significance; The Narrator, however, uses soap in what could be his possible financial future. By selling this highly profitable soap he can make an easy living, but it would change nothing in his life. The significance of soap with fighting, therefore, is not easily visible. This is what makes visible the fact that fighting releases anger. If blood is noteworthy and is not to be cleaned off, then it is accepted.

The narrator soon finds himself with a severe case of insomnia. He describes it: “with insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy." After making a trip to the doctor for some medical relief, he tells the doctor that he is in pain; the doctor replies that he should attend a testicular cancer support group. Out of curiosity he decides to attend often, and when he sees the pain of others he feels free and a sense of community. Here he can let go of his feelings and have support. Although he has no cancer, the group meetings become an addiction that he begins to attend twice a week. (The meetings become a vacation for him that are so necessary that he cannot sleep with them.) The Narrator has positioned himself inside of these support groups so he can see the pity of others. He despairs and therefore cries. When he sees people in worse condition than himself, he ponders where he is on this chain himself. He assumes the worst to get the most.

When a support leader leads the Narrator to have a mental examination, he learns his power. She (the group leader) leads them into their cave in which the person’s “power” exists. As the narrator walks through his cave, he sees his power, a penguin. A cave symbolizes entrapment, confinement and the penguin, symbolically from Hades, comes to him and tells him to “slide”. The penguin proceeds to slide on the ice inside of this frozen, snow-glazed cave. The guide uses a cave to make the emotional despair noticeable inside of him. When he saw the penguin, he became confused, but when it commanded him to slide, he was relieved and jokingly questioned the experience. The Narrator is beginning his first practice in determining his inner-self. The penguin symbolizes what is to come later in the movie; it determines the inner-person with whom the Narrator has to unite.

The narrator considers himself a tourist; he goes to the meetings for reasons, which have nothing to do with the group discussions, but for his insomnia. When Marla starts attending the meetings, he immediately notices that she is also a tourist. She has no diseases or illness and the narrator is greatly offended by this, because he says that if there is another tourist present, he cannot cry anymore, therefore he can’t sleep, and his life is more miserable than before.

Marla’s has a gothic, junkie look. She is dressed in black and is usually overdosed with a medication or drug. She is the antagonist of the story and represents a character from hell. When the narrator undergoes another mental examination, he enters the cave again, although this time, there is no penguin; it’s a cold desolate cave with Marla perched upon an icicle waiting for him. He wakes up and is angered. Although he expresses himself towards Marla in hateful ways, he feels connected to her in some way. He feels unity with her because, from his perspective, she too depends on the group meetings for social support. But Marla has a frame of mind that sets her up in a sense that she is always about to die. In this way she has a no fear attitude that excites the narrator.

Marla is the scum of the story that the soap must clean. She pressures others for sex and is very explicit about her sexual problems. Her characteristics define her as “trash”. Both The Narrator and Tyler create a very expensive soap for financing the Fight Club. Since Marla is a woman she cannot join the fight club, the Fight Club being the Soap. Since Marla cannot cleanse herself, she is stuck halfway between Hades and the Fight Club. She involves herself with Tyler and the Narrator but cannot compete in their club. This is the significance that separates her from being with the Narrator himself. Although initially she spends most of her time with him, when she meets Tyler, she prefers him to the Narrator, mostly because they are now (in this part of the story) on different levels of emotions.

On the job, the Narrator spends a lot of his time on the plane, and sometimes talking to his seatmate. At one point the Narrator sits next to Tyler Durden. Tyler produces soap for a living. Soap, being the key to cleanliness, the Narrator immediately becomes attached to Tyler for several reasons. Tyler is very interesting; he poses interesting theories that spark the Narrator’s imagination. For example, Tyler says that planes supply oxygen in emergencies to calm the passengers; the Narrator finds this comical but very feasible. The Narrator also tells Tyler that he is his most “interesting single-serving friend”. Tyler returns the compliment by telling him that he is clever. The Narrator now finds someone that he can get along with. Tyler is not boring and is unlike the slaves of the world. He says what is on his mind and the Narrator likes that.

While on the same plane trip, the Narrator experiences a dream; before he meets Tyler, he talks about how he wishes that the plane would have a mid-air collision or crash landing. At that moment he dreams a mid-air collision and grinningly watches the passengers fly out of the plane. Here we see yet another series of events but only the beginning that lead to the fight club, although this experience may seem to lead to the fact that he is emotionally desperate enough to enjoy watching death. He wants to release his anger, and because he spends so much time on the plane, a death out of the plane seems logical enough considering that his boring life would end. This is the major leading factor to the fight club, particularly because it is positioned so close to the commencement of the club.

When The Narrator becomes roommates with Tyler at Tyler’s house, they create a “Fight Club”. They believe that men are lost and powerless in today’s society and in order to fix that and break away from the slave life they have to fight. The club is very much like an army in that you must shave your hair and follow strict orders from Tyler, the leader. The club will make soap in order to finance the operations; the soap is made from human fat. This is significant because it is made of human biomaterial used for cleaning human skin; it helps to elaborate on the people’s possession obsession. The soap is sold to department stores for twenty dollars a bar. The narrator exclaims the stupidity of the women purchasing their own fat in order to clean themselves. This is The Narrator’s anguish with the world, and he is expressing it. The soap here is used not for cleansing but to demonstrate the possession-obsessed world that we live in. The people who buy the soap will buy it for personal reasons, no matter the cost. The Narrator illustrates this as he ponders that if they sell the soap to the department stores for twenty, how much do they charge the people?

When Tyler Durden is accepting people into the fight club, he makes sure that they understand why the world we all live in is wrong. Tyler begins by telling how the people are slaves of their own world. He wants people to release their anger in a fight. He assigns projects to destroy buildings, cars, and other expensive possessions. The narrator, now content and active, feels that the whole situation is getting too awkward. He is happy but is skeptical about hurting others, and for the first time he seems to enjoy his life. Here the Narrator is happy; he believes that he has reached his maximum potential happiness. He wants to continue the fight club and is pleased to hear that they are becoming bountiful around the country. At work, however, he is continually late, dirty, bloody and is found making copies of the fight club rules. He continues his daily routines at work but quickly becomes more ignorant of work. The club takes away from his work; he expresses this by saying to the viewer that after a fight, everything is much quieter. This portrays what the fight club is doing to the narrator’s occupation.

The movie’s soap theme backfires on the narrator here. Now that he has cleansed himself of all of possessions, he is free to do whatever he wants however, he now feels confused and very skeptical about the whole process. For once that narrator comes to his senses. At one point in the story, a character called “Bob” is very much respected because of his abundant courage inside of the club. (But it isn’t until Bob is killed during one of Tyler’s assignments.) Unfortunately the leader, Tyler Durden, mesmerizes everyone in the club they ignore the problems that are in their current and continue to worship him. This is where the movie turns around and the soap significance seems to boil down to the end of the movie where it used as an explosive. This is the climax; this symbolizes the end of The Narrators problems, and ties together everything that soap was used for.

When the narrator finally learns that he is the creator of the fight club, and that Tyler Durden is only a figment of his imagination, he goes crazy. As he learns this, he slowly thinks back to everything that has happened. The narrator has suffered an emotional breakdown. His mind repaired this by creating another person inside his head. This person, named Tyler Durden, is everything the Narrator needs in a friend. The narrator is able to look up to Tyler since Tyler has every characteristic that the Narrator has always wanted. The fighting club itself is used to destroy property he feels that by doing this people will disband their possessions and will be free. That is his philosophy but it is not until Tyler mentioned this to him that he noticed this. Tyler is the narrator’s inner self he brings out the plain and simple person that he is. The Narrator’s previous obsession with consumer goods is the main target that is destroyed by the soap figure. Here the soap purifies the Narrator because he destroys his own possessions himself. His inner self (Tyler) is trying to restart The Narrator so he can be free. An example of The Narrator’s rage when Tyler questions him: What would you most regret not having done if you died now? The Narrator mumbles at this because he cannot respond. The Narrator is certainly the most intellectual of the movie he can easily come up with a response but that would be against his current fantasy. Because he has imagined Tyler all this time and Tyler asks him a question, it would be foolish to undermine him. His fantasy is about rage. He wants to destroy possessions and break free from the slave world. He lives for the times when the boss or others put pressure on him, because he can switch personalities and come up with several responses it is his only attribute that he respects. When his boss confronted him for making copies of Fight Club rules using the Work Copy Machine, he immediately changed to a social outcast, exclaiming that whoever would do such a thing has serious emotional problems. He goes on to say that if one were to confront this person, he may kill others because he may go insane. (Backing to Tyler’s question about what one would do to make life better), it is extremely significant. Here The Narrator’s preferred self (Tyler) is actually asking the actual Narrator what he is missing in life. This is asking one’s self what needs to be done in order to improve, or what more can we do to make life happier. The Narrator’s lack of response signifies his immature ability to comprehend his current state. Tyler, as his current guide, seems to grow impatient with the Narrator’s inability to decide what he needs and doesn’t need to do. This has to all be considered as The Narrator’s higher self. Tyler is the guide who has complete control; he is used as a learning experience where if The Narrator follows too closely he will fail in life, work and he will forever have his emotional problems. This question is overcoming his problems. The Narrator is inadvertently asking this to himself.

Although hard to see, the first clue that Tyler was The Narrator’s actual self was when both The Narrator and Tyler were in the same room with Marla. For example, when Marla was with both of them, Tyler can only talk or respond to one of them, or when Tyler is busy working on something for the club, he announces to The Narrator that if Marla comes in, he should say nothing about Tyler; this is The Narrator’s inner-self telling himself not to let others know that he is in fact, a psycho, or having mental problems. If he asked Marla about another person, she would be confused, upset and would probably leave. This is The Narrator’s chance to put some events together and figure out that Tyler is unreal. This is important because it expresses The Narrator’s lack of ability to figure out what was happening this whole time, or how Tyler Durden came to be. His ignorance of the fact that Tyler is unreal is intellectual when he gets even close to figuring out (like the previous examples) who Tyler is, he chooses to forget it and ignores all evidence of those instances. He does this early in the movie because he is as of yet inexperienced with this new environment and wants to accept what is happening.

The Narrator’s job was a perfect requirement of the fight club leader. He was required to travel all over the country on numerous occasions to check on the status of cars after their accidents. While he was out of town, he could create new clubs that others would join. His militia would become nation-wide and more powerful than the United States Army. His militia was meant to be an “underground” “life-saving” operation. However, while The Narrator is enjoying the fame of creating the Fight Club, he learns that his mental counter-part Tyler Durden was responsible for it. It becomes a competition and this is what brings the Narrator to his conclusion.

The Narrator knew what was wrong he had let it get out of control the master plan was to blow up several buildings; but The Narrator stopped it he symbolically shoots himself to destroy Tyler. He knows right from wrong and when he finally overcomes his emotional depression, he can figure what to do. At first he looks up to Tyler he uses him as a guide but later on as he matures he learns to deal with his pain. He learned that the Club was too overwhelming to handle, especially now that he was back to his senses. During the whole movie The Narrator is repeating, “What If” he is skeptical about everything he has done. In fact he does not even know if he wants to change the past. Again, it is only when he realizes that Tyler is in fact his inner self, which he can distinguish what right is from wrong. Because he is till able to hold the capacity of knowing the consequences of his actions, he is slow to go ahead with everything. That is where gets angry. Tyler becomes his opposite, he is a go-getter. He gets things accomplished and, at the end, scares The Narrator. The Narrator completes his story with the beginning scene, except this time he destroys his counterpart.

The final scene is highly unrealistic but defines the mental courage that The Narrator must summon to overcome himself. The fact that he must shoot himself in the head symbolically labels the extreme courage that it took to eliminate Tyler Durden. At once Tyler’s head is blown off.

This film is not about a fight club, or fighting itself, instead this movie is death. The power to let go of your morals to kill or damage anything to the point of elimination frees one’s self of community control, that is, the proper, moral way to behave in today’s world. The Narrator here learns to regret, rage, and his questions of life purpose. Where and what am I to do, and what can I do to release my anger. The movie used fighting not to attract people to the movie but to define the courage and death behind the movie. What doesn’t stand out formally is the background of the movie, the death and how it relates to the climaxes of the story. The Narrator here can overcome Tyler by only one thing, death, and Tyler can overcome The Narrator by death, except his death is to blow up the city. This is the turning point where The Narrator has to take his own course. By shooting himself in the head he symbolically kills the demon controlling his body, Tyler Durden.