If you haven't seen Fight Club, it is highly recommended you check out this masterpiece directed by David Fincher. This analysis is spoiler free of what makes that move great.
Tyler Durden is a character in the cult classic film Fight Club, which is based on a novel by the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. Tyler Druden is unique. He is the sole definition of chaos. Throughout the movie, he serves as a foil to the narrator because he isn't just the person the narrator wants to be, but also what society thinks a real man should be. Tyler describes himself as "smart, capable...[and] free..." He walks and talks like there is no tomorrow; he accepts that his life will end someday. He's the type of person who will pee in your soup, which he does in the film. He is the type of person who dresses with nice shirt and leather jacket with a businessman's suitcase yet jumps into a convertible and takes it for himself. For these reasons he is idolized by every character he meets in the story especially the unnamed narrator. With all these things in his favor, you'd expect the man to give in you his societies expectations, but that's what makes him unique. Tyler Durden is charismatic which is why he becomes the creator of a dirty underground club known simply as "Fight Club."
Durden knows from the very beginning that he is not the center of world nor is any other "average" man who keeps to his own. He is willing to do anything he can to prove to society that their lives are meaningless to everyone else. Only after this, men will be able to live as free men. This is clearly evident in a scene where he speaks through a megaphone to his new "project members" and says:
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
In a sense, Tyler is also extremely psychopathic, even for running an underground fight club, leading a group that causes mayhem in order to complete what he calls "Project Mayhem." He is an anarchist, willing to use lethal methods to convey his message.
The scene I decided to look at is called "Human Sacrifice." This scene clearly illustrates the disturbing yet somehow caring nature of Tyler Durden.
What Tyler wants to do is make people realize that they are not important to anyone else in the world. He wants them to understand this and accept it and only then people will began to live their lives to the fullest. In the film, he says "First you have to give up, first you have to know...not fear...know...that someday you're gonna die." He also wants to take the focus off of the movie stars and celebrities we look up to and look at ourselves first. "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." This is clearly evident in this scene. Tyler's goal is to make the man being robbed realize how easily life an come to end. Throughout the whole movie Tyler lives his life likes its his last day, which makes every moment exciting and meaningful for him and that's how he wants this man to feel for the rest of his life. He highlights that you only get one live, why not do what you want to do.
Not just in this scene, but the whole movie, Tyler is struggles between how to convey his message. Although the audience doesn't see his struggle, it is evident from how many different ways he has tried. In this scene, he threats the man by pointing a gun at his head and making him realize how working at a convenient store will not take him anywhere. The threat of pulling the trigger makes the man realize that he need to reflect on his life and go back to get education to do what he wanted to do in the first place, which is to become veterinarian.
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