Fight Club’s ending
September 27th, 2007 by Will
I’m having new thoughts about Fight Club’s ending that I haven’t had before. It’s more tragic now.
What I mean is before now I always thought of it as a love story. The narrator starts out living an unfulfilled life and then he meets a soulmate. But sometimes when you resonate so strongly with someone and yet you’re just the slightest bit out of sync the resonance rips you two apart just as strongly as it would otherwise pull you together. See the narrator meets his soulmate in the moment that he feels at his weakest, when he’s going to groups to seek solace in other people’s greater miseries. And you don’t feel sexy when you’re at your weakest, so the narrator pushes Marla away. And re-invents himself as the warrior he thinks he needs to be to win her… or the warrior he thinks she ought to be won by. So much so that he deludes himself into thinking the loser who trolls the group sessions isn’t even the same person as this warrior he has created. In the end he pulls himself from the brink, he integrates his split personalities, and he realizes she’s drawn to all of him. He lets go of his delusions, and as the credit company buildings blow up and reset everyone’s debt record back to zero, he and Marla hold hands and reset their romance back to zero.
Or really, it doesn’t even need to make that much sense. A good love story just has the energy that lets you know it’s right, no matter what literally happens.
But that’s how I used to think of it. Tonight, pondering my own split personalities, I was struck by the screaming question I hadn’t yet thought to ask:
Why didn’t Tyler Durden shoot the narrator instead?
The logic was clearly laid out. Tyler was who the narrator wished he was, but the narrator certainly wasn’t who Tyler wished he was. And there’s that emotional component…
The elephant in the whole movie is Brad Pitt, who presents the paradox so precisely: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t.”
In another scene, the narrator sees an advertisement with a Calvin Klein underwear model and asks “Is that what a real man is supposed to look like?” and in response the millionaire movie god with an far more superstar body than the unknown Calvin Klein model smirks knowingly.
The irony of Brad Pitt playing the role of the liberator who realigns our perceptions cannot be reasoned away. It’s classic joke theory, where our Freudian egos are distracted by the flattery of superficial wit, freeing our ids to fully enjoy the emotional energy of wicked thoughts. While Palahniuk’s writing is dazzling you with such clever punchlines as Tyler’s:
“Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I’ve ever met… see I have this thing: everything on a plane is single-serving…”
“Oh I get it, it’s very clever. ”
“Thank you.”
“How’s that working out for you? ”
“What?”
“Being clever.”
… your id is feasting on Brad Pitt’s glistening 5% body fat abs, catlike movement, 99th percentile facial symmetry, and total comfort in his own being. Without the sexiest man alive prancing around and socially proving the narrator, would we really see Everyman Ed Norton or would we see Primal Fear’s psychopath introvert?
I guess these two contrasting views of the movie come down to this:
In a joke, which is more important - the cleverness, or the sex, violence, and farting?
(Answer: The Aristocrats!)
…
I also never noticed before that the narrator shares the same duality condition that I do. We’re both Ed Norton by ourselves, and Brad Pitt in public. Except his Brad Pitt is craftier than mine, managing to sneak off into the company of others and spend less and less time as Ed Norton.
Although, I have been going to bed earlier and sleeping in later recently. I thought it was just depression …but maybe somewhere I’m being Tyler more?
If so, Tyler, please shoot me. The alternative would be tragic.
One of the things I love about film is that audiences will take a movie at wherever they’re at personally…so a film becomes less about some touted absolute meaning and more about what it means to each person individually. The strongest films are the ones that go deep and somehow tap into something that resonates with a great many people, individually and specifically but en masse. The Human Condition I guess.
I think Tyler doesn’t shoot the Narrator because he can’t. I think in that moment the Narrator reaches a point of realisation that the only way to get rid of Tyler is to assimilate him back into himself, to become him (at least in part) and own him instead of allowing himself to be owned by him. Killing someone is the ultimate assertation of dominance over their existance, but in this case it is symbolic of the end of Tyler, not definititvely but as a separate identity. Just before he shoots, the Narrator says emphatically to Tyler “My eyes are open”; he is awake to the various parts of himself and he is aware of everything Tyler is and does. He is no longer the unconcious everyman he was at the beginning of the film, he is also partly Tyler. Tyler’s words coming out of his mouth. And he used to be such a nice boy.
This is the awareness that allows him to accept his “Tyler parts” and the reason why the essence of Tyler is not killed off altogether. He is therefore able to bring the two halves of himself back into alignment, something Tyler could never bring himself to do…because as you said, Tyler is everything the Narrator wishes to be, but the Narrator is not anything Tyler wishes to be.
It’s almost an archetypal story - the original wholeness in innocence/ignorance that is then shed for the descent into knowledge and then the conscious return to wholeness with that knowledge fully integrated to complete the journey; even the Adam and Eve story is along these lines if you look into it.
I’d say the two sides need eachother to exist - both necessary to the other’s survival, as neither is all encompassing enough to live alone. In the beginning the two characters are diametrically opposed, and neither is really capable of functioning as useful human beings. It is only together that they are in balance. But by the end, the Narrator has found a balance between the Tyler parts of himself and the introverted parts, and so he is free to reconcile those parts and continue on. Tyler could never make that transition (partly because he’s the antagontist, who by definition causes change but does not do so himself) and therefore cannot continue to exist in this form.
But hey, maybe that’s all just me…given that I’m a Libran and everything is always about balance ;)
As for you also being Tyler and the Narrator, I’d say that the film has certainly done its job in finding something personal and specific to show you about yourself. The question is, are you going to try to find a way to assimilate both extremes? Or will you allow one to rule over the other and remain only half of yourself…because that would be the tragedy :)