Pain In Tyler Durden's Fight Club

Desperately propelling himself toward the deeper immersion of conforming with society, yet seemingly unable to fill the void of dissatisfaction he feels, Jack relentlessly suffers from insomnia. This inability to sleep is described as seeing everything becoming “a copy of a copy of a copy” (PAGE), in the same way that everything in this commercialized culture is artificialized; nothing is unique. It is only with Tyler Durden’s aid that the narrator realizes “the things you own end up owning you” (PAGE), and thus seeks to break out of his hollow, empty existence by creating Fight Club. Within a society obsessed with material goods and stratifying people according to their different social levels, Fight Club offers these “white-collar slaves”

Forcing Jack to “stay with the pain” (FILM) and face it manifests the idea that, despite what large corporations make us believe, humans are much more resilient than we think. On top of this, the idea of pain being the portal to one’s “true self” not only pervades the story, but also endorses perhaps the most memorable line in the novel: “It is only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything” (PAGE). Confronting and facing these primal feelings of pain, Jack is able to finally find a sense of authentic ‘self’. Fundamentally, conformity is a leash; the only way the narrator is able to break free is to experience true emotions, whether it be the support groups, his deep-rooted feelings for Marla, or the pain, fear and aggression Tyler teaches him through Fight Club. “Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing”

Seeing an ad of a well-built, attractive male model posing in his high-brand underwear, Tyler questions whether that is “what a man is supposed to look like” (FILM). In a society where their remaining, lingering sense of masculinity is measured by their wealth, power and status, the men in Fight Club must harness the frustration, confusion and rage they feel towards the world defining them, forcing them to become “byproducts of a lifestyle obsession” (PAGE). In the same way that Tyler, a confident man “free in all the ways (Jack) is not” (PAGE), exists as a constant reminder to Jack of his lack of qualities, advertisements have a way of making society feel incompetent. Tyler, no longer confined to this mental enslavement, is able to realize that “you are not the contents of your wallet; you are not your job” (PAGE). It is the uneasiness of the lack of perfection the narrator’s ideal self makes him feel which mirrors the role of advertisements in society, thus offering consumers a myriad of products to become their enviable future self. Nevertheless, critics of the film such as Giroux find the fact that the dauntless anti-hero Tyler Durden is played by Hollywood superstar Brad Pitt a “contradiction that cannot be overstated”