Tyler Durden: The Fight Clubs Synopsis - Essay Example

Number] Tyler Durden: The Fight Club’s Synopsis Tyler Durden the main character of the novel, is a charismatic personality able to appeal to a large following. He is revered, to an extent that everyone with whom he comes in contact with, starts to idolize him. He builds relationship with utmost ease. His personality portrayal in the story is a blend of intelligence, adventurism with traces of insanity. Tyler Durden opposes the societal rules and regulations. He views them as inhibiting factors, suppressing the mental faculties of one’s mind, hence caging it. Intelligence, the most prominent feature of his personality, can be seen throughout the story. His ability to recall murky information about his past experiences depicts the sharpness of his mind. The examples of his ingenuity are numerous, like for instance The Paper Street Soap Company. It was a project which he initiated, in which soaps were manufacture in a rather unusual way. The soap was made from human fat mixed with scents and herbs. The fat used was one discarded after the process of liposuction. The soap was a success and was sold at a ridiculous amount of profit. Another example of his knowledge was that he knew three different ways of making napalm. In novel describes it like this: The adventure seeking part of his personality was that it peaked to a point of no return. He would always seek out for a higher spiritual calling. His desire to seek such calling justified his quest for adventurism. He was of the view that only through toying with death, that is seeking adventurism one can have a spiritual recognition. The insane part of his personality can be seen in his indifference towards suffering. Tyler’s philosophy was that, only through destroying oneself can one discover the greater power of spirit. His charismatic personality led him to found the fight club, a large number of people started to follow him. His relationship bond was so deep that people followed him blindly. He created profound relationships and assigned each individual a specific job. “Don’t bother them. They all know what to do. It’s part of project mayhem. No one guy understands the whole plan, but each guy is trained to do one simple task perfectly” (Palahniuc 130). He would emotionally break his followers to such a level, that they would not even consider themselves equal to dirt: “‘I am the all-singing, all dancing crap of this world, ‘the space monkey tells the mirror ‘I am the toxic waste by-product of God’s creation.’” (Palahniuk 167). His appetite for violence and destruction could be the theory that possibly Tyler’s lack of connection with God and religion could be due to lack of the male parental figure in his life. (Rothe-Koshel 8). Tyler Durden is the product of aversion towards the prevalent American society, based on Capitalistic ideals. The pursuit of false goals which the capitalistic society forces upon the people. In other words, people have to do jobs they hate just to buy what they don’t really need. Tyler tends to reject the concept of the corporate society based on consumerism. The course of action that he adopted, might seem violent from the surface, but in actual was a search for reclamation of freedom and justice, from a society that promotes capitalistic ideals. The Fight Club is therefore a place for the marginalized men of the society to let loose their anger and resentment towards the society, a way of addressing their inner anxieties and frustrations. Tyler believes that the contemporary plot of society has made us follow things that we don’t really need. The society has made the lives purposeless and the reality rather dull. Materialism takes over necessity. Fight Club culture was developed in a parking lot of a bar. His construction meant the idea of an urban legend type of a figure, who would provide an outlet for the young adults, from middle classes, raised by single parents in a rigidly controlled society, to violently express their primal needs. Emerson the American Transcendentalist argues that the society is in conspiracy against us. It steals the manhood and makes people conformist. Emerson writes “whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist”. According to him society subjugates us by making us conformist. Emerson says, that society is an institution that robs its members of basic freedom which is an essential element of self-reliance. The society restricts the thinking of its people. Allows which is acceptable to it and disallows which is not. Society considers itself as an adversary to a free thinking man. Emerson presses that individual should value their thoughts and feelings and express them freely. Emerson believes that each individual is divinely unique with a purpose to serve. He is of the view that when individual will exercised with freedom his will, he will serve his divine purpose. The restrictions of the society only curtails the divine purpose and creates opposition and frustration. Society thus promotes conformity. The majority follows what is acceptable to the society and whosoever deviates from the norm is considered a deviant. Individualism is thus condemned. Therefore it can be said that the Fight Club and eventually the Project Mayhem was actually a way of freeing the marginalized men from the shackles of conformity. Living life freely without any external factors meddling in. Fight club, Tyler’s creation, was an attempt to transform the society. He wanted to let loose the society from the shackles of capitalistic manipulation. He aim was that the smart white-collared folks, should seek freedom from the existential slavery induced by capitalism. Tyler Durden despised the established social order, where materialism with its urban ruins created a fool’s paradise curtailing the freewill and freethinking of people. He therefore tried to liberate the marginalized segment from the plaque of conformity. Rothe-Kushel a writer for Film Journal describers Tyler like this: “Tyler Durden is everything the narrator wishes he could be, Tyler is a walking, talking cultural commentator. He is cynical, strong and forthright.” (Rothe-Kushel 1). Society believes that its aim is to provide food to each of its member. To fulfill this it requires that its members should sacrifice their freedom and manhood. The reason behind it is the fact that society requires conformity to achieve its objectives. Nonconformity on the other hand can only hamper its desired objective. Therefore society has no room for nonconformist tendencies. If for arguments sake the society does accepts the nonconformist attitude, it will only anger the conforming majority who have sacrificed their freedom. According to Emerson society has a negative impact on an individual’s growth. It hampers the growth of one’s spirit, however solitude can have an opposite effect. Society creates dependency thus limiting the growth of individuals. Tyler Durden on the other hand too preached freedom, however the means he adopted to achieve the desired objectives contradicted the very ideals he preached. His followers followed him blindly in obedience. Their blind following lacked individualism, the very ideal he fought for. Tyler thus was a product of a hollow life of consumerism, where a person is a sort of a slave, caught in a cycle where he earns wage and then spends it on things he really don’t need. The quest to seek individual identity thus creates him. He therefore adopts a path, to find an identity in the society, which turns out be a rather violent and destructive one. Works Cited Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print Lim, Dennis. “Fight Club, Fight Goes On.” The New York Times 08 Nov. 2009, New York ed.:AR18. Print. Self-Reliance Summary, Masterpiece of American Literature. Web. 15 Nov 2014. Rothe-Kushel, Jelhro. ‘Fight Club: A Ritual Cure for Spiritual Ailment of American Masculinity.’ The film journal (2002). Web. 20 Nov 2014. Read More