Fight Club

“Fight Club”

In David Fincher’s “Fight Club” a man battles within himself to live a life he has always dared to live, but in the end when everything is taken to the extreme, he realizes it’s too late to change what he has done. He struggles with the social structure due to his realization that he is in fact powerless in today’s society. He is constantly fighting his alter personality Tyler Durden for control of not only himself but also the world around them. He sees Marla as the lie that exists within himself and despises her for it. Fincher implies that sometimes people have to completely free themselves of their materialistic ideals in order to truly be free. Fincher also suggests that in some cases the absence of a male father figure have lead to instability and the creation of Mr. Hyde.

The setting is one marked with desire for an awakening to the world around us. The fact that the protagonist does not have a name is because he represents anyone and everyone in today’s society he could even be named Jack. The opening views inside Jack’s brain are dark with flashes of fear for his very existence. The city view at night is the dark materialistic civilization in which we live. Bob (the man with breasts) is his missing family that isn’t there to hold him. The wet face on Bob’s shirt resembling a face is Jack, giving himself and opening up to Bob. In the beginning, there are several subliminal images of Tyler; this is in fact a manifestation of his subconscious to create a solution to the problems in Jack’s world.

The wrappers in the trash can represent the need to throw away the chains that corporate America has bounded us by. The items in the apartment are symbolic of who we are and how the world sees us. The yen and the yang coffee table is characteristic of the dualism in Jack’s Dr Jeckel and Mr. Hyde complex. The passion he wants to cure his life with is the red pills he asks the doctor for.

In Jack’s meeting he wears, a “Hello My Name is” sign on his jacket but we never really know his name. Later we find out the first and second rule of fight club is don’t talk about fight club. These symbols along with the fact that they fight in a basement are all of the repressed emotions he hides, and secrecy in which he holds them.

Jack finds himself isolated in his own reality, which is symbolic by the cave and his power animal the penguin. Penguin’s animals that belong to the bird species but unlike other birds they can’t fly so they do what they can and just “slide.” The black dress, shades and even the cigarettes Marla smokes are the lies that expose Jack as a fraud. Single serving packets are the isolated lives that have consumed Generation X.

The plane, and the imaginary crash mark the death of his old life and a journey to a new existence. Tyler Durden is symbolic because in old English Tyler means gatekeeper and Durden is durable and hard, thus the need for the manifestation is Jack’s mind. When jacks apartment is blown up and he calls jack, this is his isolation that consumes his life and the absence of family. During the first fight there is a heartbeat heard in the back ground this is the pulse of jack’s new life. The urination in the soup is the defiance toward the upper class to taste the waste they have produced. In order to truly be free Tyler, and Jack go to an abandoned house and rid them selves of the society they live in.

When his boss is talking to him his voice is lowered to show how relative his importance has become. When Jack tells Tyler that he has no dad, he is