Every evening I died, and every evening I was born again Resurrected- This quote from the Narrator (Edward Norton) could not be more true. Fight Club (1999 by David Fincher) is a gripping psychological rollercoaster in which the Narrator's mind creates an alter image of himself as he would like to be seen, this image is Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). The movie throws a barrage of ideas at us about the world and how we, as people, fit into it. Here, however, we will only be focusing on the images linking the Narrator and Tyler, which aid the Narrator's struggle to develop his "real" self. .
Summing up the film is not an easy task, as so much of it is vital to the whole idea, so only the gist of the Narrators plight follows. Norton plays a consumer-centered insomniac who is most likely unsatisfied with the humdrum direction his life has taken. Early on he meets Tyler, "meet" here is used in the loosest sense of the word since we know that Tyler is simply an extension of the Narrator's mind, who seems to be the binary opposite of the Narrator. Through a nearly insane series of mayhem-causing events Tyler opens the Narrator's eyes to all the things that have him trapped, and by this, sets him free. The ultimate eye opening occurs at the end of the film only after the Narrator seems to have fallen and hit rock bottom, an idea that is foreshadowed earlier by Tyler "It's only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything-.
Let us now look that the first meeting of the Narrator and Tyler. After a mysterious explosion destroys the Narrator's condo while on a business trip, he is left with nowhere to go. For reasons he can't explain he calls his new "friend" Tyler, whom he meet only hours before in the plane back from his trip, and meets him in a run down bar. After three pitchers of beer and an "outlook on life" conversation the Narrator still won't ask Tyler for help, even though Tyler knows full well that was the real reason of this chance meeting.