Fight Club

The Narrator awakens to find Tyler standing over his bed. Tyler says that every time the Narrator falls asleep, Tyler wakes up and runs Fight Club, runs Project Mayhem, attacks the Seattle police commissioner, and threatens to cut off his testicles for trying to shut down the city’s chapter of Fight Club. Tyler has expanded Project Mayhem to several major cities across the country, and he has no intentions of slowing down or stopping. Tyler rented the Paper Street house in the Narrator’s name, Tyler has been overdrawing the Narrator’s bank accounts, and since the Narrator never gave Marla his real name, she thinks he is Tyler. Marla sees no difference between the two of them, as they are inhabiting the same body. The Narrator’s sleeping problems are caused by Tyler’s activities; the Narrator never truly sleeps, since as soon as he is unconscious, Tyler takes control and lives his own life. Tyler calls the Narrator inauthentic, and he threatens him with untold consequences should he ever try to prevent Tyler from taking control (chaining himself to the bed at night, taking sleeping pills, etc.). The Narrator insists he was here first, and Tyler responds that what matters is who is here last.

The Narrator returns home to Paper Street and finds everything falling apart. He is afraid to look in the fridge for the possibility that there might be some public official’s testicles in sandwich baggie. The members of Project Mayhem repeat, mantra-like, “I am the all-singing, all-dancing crap of this world” (169). The Narrator instructs Marla to never open the fridge, never eat anything in the house, and to never feed anything from the fridge to an animal. He notices a Project member watching them, so they leave the house and continue their talk at a nearby Denny’s restaurant. Their waiter is a Project member; he comps their entire meal. The Narrator only orders coffee, and he asks the cook to please give them only clean food.

The Narrator asks Marla to follow him everywhere at night, and to keep a record of everything he does. He shows her his driver’s license, which bears his real name, and she asks why he is Tyler Durden to some people and not others. He recalls meeting Tyler for the first time on the beach, on a vacation he took when he was frustrated with his life but could not see any way to change it. The Narrator confides his fears to Marla. If he keeps going to sleep earlier and earlier, and waking up later and later, eventually Tyler will be in control so much and for so long that the Narrator might stop existing altogether. He asks Marla to help him stay awake all night.

Bob’s full name is Robert Paulson. He is forty-eight years old when he joins Project Mayhem, and he dies shortly after when the police mistake his cordless electric drill for a handgun. At Fight Clubs across the country, members gather in Bob’s memory. They chant, “His name is Robert Paulson” (178). In death, Bob is revered as a hero. The Narrator attends Fight Club in his city, fully aware for the first time that he is Tyler Durden to these men. He tries to tap into Tyler’s presence, his charm, his authority, to tell the participants to go home. The Narrator tells them that Fight Club is cancelled, Project Mayhem is cancelled, and that the fun is over because a man died. The fighters only stare at him before proceeding as usual. The Narrator is forcibly removed from the circle; the people there all lift him up, passing his body across the top of the crowd and out the entry door. They toss him into the parking lot and lock him out.

The Narrator visits Marla in her room at the Regent Hotel. She prepares “wake-up pills” for him. The Narrator worries that the front desk clerk, an obvious member of Fight Club and Project Mayhem, is reporting his whereabouts to other members. Marla shares her plans to keep him awake all night; they go to a 24/7 bowling alley because they will not be kicked out and the staff will not let people sleep inside the facility. The Narrator wonders aloud if the solution to his problem is not to just keep Tyler at bay, but to somehow get rid of him completely. As they head to the bowling alley at four o’clock in the morning, Marla asks in a half-joking manner if they can use his clout as Tyler to get themselves a lot of free stuff before they get rid of Tyler for good.