Looking for Tyler Durden...

It’s 7am, I’m laying wide awake in my bed, I flip through the channels looking for something worth watching…Fight Club (perfect I thought).



Fight Club is still one my favorite movies of all time, for a number of reasons…  I remember being a freshman at FSU watching this for the first time.  I didn’t care about the underlying themes of this movie, all I cared about was the fighting scenes.  The idea of a “fight club” was amazing to me (isn’t that what most testosterone filled college freshman would think?).  The thing is, this movie is about so much more than just fighting, a “fraternity or club”, and even middle aged men who join simply to beat the shit out of one another.  For a younger person though, I can see how it may even be difficult to grasp the complexity and sub-themes of this movie.

Really the movie is about peoples daily internal struggles.  Everyone's greatest struggle is with himself or herself. In Fight Club, the Narrator, creates another personality for himself so that he can deal with his own internal struggle. He is unhappy with everything in his life from his job to his relationships, and he cannot help himself. He has already lost his identity, which is why he remains unnamed throughout the whole movie. His subconscious mind takes its own route to helping the Narrator, by creating Tyler Durden.

Tyler Durden, creates an organization known as Fight Club where men can take out their frustrations by beating each other up. This allows the animalistic, masculine side of these men to emerge and flourish in a society that pushes down the instincts of strength....

This really hit me this morning…let’s be honest, fighting seems to be a thing of my past at this point in my life. 

We all have those times when we feel like Jack (the lighter side of the Narrator).  We go through life looking at ourselves as consumers and simply get in a slump or rut.

To get back to Tyler though, its not about the winning. It’s about finding out about yourself, about pushing your limits.  It’s about uncovering that area of life that can be explored in this way.  It is about wanting something and going after it. Weather you get that or not, it doesn’t matter...as long as you can live with your own efforts.

Out... Cundiff