I AM JACK'S SCENE ANALYSIS

 

IN THE END

'Please return your seat backs to their full, upright and locked position' (DVD TIME CUE 1:51:06) Jack says as he realizes the full extent of what's been going on, more specifically, what's been going on inside his own head. In the end, Jack realizes that Tyler has been a figment of his imagination, an apparition that his psyche has created in order to help facilitate the change from who he was as a person to who he wanted to become. Tyler was Jacks ideal image of himself, everything that he wanted to be … Tyler was. 'People do it everyday … they talk to themselves … see themselves, as they'd like to be. They don't have the courage you [Jack] have to just RUN with it … little by little, you're just letting yourself become … Tyler Durden' (DVD TIME CUE 1:53:32). Jack's inherent feminine qualities have finally reigned in his runaway masculine tendencies that have lashed out at the world around them. The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations (The practice of Psychotherapy par 330 quoted in LEE). In the end we rejoin the beginning scene with the gun barrel in Jacks mouth. Jack signifies that he has taken back control over his psyche when he says: 'Tyler … I want you to really listen to me … my eyes are open' (DVD TIME CUE 2:13:00) moments before he puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger, killing Jacks ideal image of himself, but not Jack as he presently is … which is accepting of his current self and what he has become. Project Mayhem members then bring Marla into the room, where just before they are about to watch the buildings of the credit card companies crumble to the ground Jack turns to Marla and says 'Marla, look at me … I'm really ok … trust me, everything's gonna be fine [buildings start to blow up in the skyline in front of them and Jack and Marla hold hands] … you met me at a very strange time in my life' (DVD TIME CUE 2:15:22). Jacks words and affection shown towards Marla in the end signify that he is ready to accept that to make it through this life, and consumer driven society where everything is not perfect or ideal … will take both of them, a man and a woman in unison and not against one another. Director David Fincher called his film 'a coming of age story about choosing a path to maturity'. For men facing an increasingly hollow, consumerized world, that path lies not in conquering women but in uniting with them against the hollowness (FALUDI).