I AM JACK'S CHARACTER DESCRIPTION

TYLER DURDEN

Is everything that Jack/The Narrator is not. "All the ways you wish you could be … that's me. I look like you want to look, [expletive] like you wanna [expletive] I am smart, capable and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not (DVD TIME CUE 1:53:15). Tyler is Jacks ideal image of himself. He's smart, good looking and most important of all … free … to do as he pleases. He answers to no one. Tyler is the carefree imaginary friend of Jack, and also the psychological crutch that many people utilize when they realize that they must make a life change but realize that they may not be strong enough mentally to accomplish it on their own (DVD TIME CUE 1:53:13). Tyler pushes Jack to make changes within his own life, and helps him find the confidence and courage he needs to make those changes a reality. Tyler is an external manifestation of a character in a drama occurring within Jack's psyche … What psychiatrist C. G. Jung called the Shadow … [that] is comprised of what we're least willing to consider a part of ourselves, but what we often need, for brief periods, to balance our lives (Whitmont in Lee). Tyler also represents all the masculine attributes that society has tried to suppress: he's mischievous, aggressive, treats women as objects, doesn't care about what others think and most important of all. He's free in every sense of the word. He's not bound by consumer ideology; he does what he wants, when he wants because he wants to do it and not because it's the 'cool' thing to do or because somebody else told him to do it. Tyler is a social anarchist, splicing frames of porn into family movies at the theatre (DVD TIME CUE: 32:20), adding his own special brand of 'seasoning' while working as a banquet waiter at a luxury hotel (DVD TIME CUE: 33:38) and making soap from human fat from dumpsters from behind liposuction clinics, selling the social elite their own bodily fats back to them. These are the roots of Project Mayhem: the removal of the one thing that would solve all our social ills. Civilization. His guiding philosophy in life is that 'It's only after you've lost everything, that your free to do anything (DVD TIME CUE 1:03:55). The problem with psychological crutches is that they are meant to be temporary. Once the life changes have been achieved, the crutch is no longer needed. Tyler may need a little bit of persuading …