In the Fight Club the author Chuck Palahniuk plays with the narration and starts his book with the climax – the most intense point of the story – and only then introduces the exposition of it. So, only starting from the 19 chapter everything falls into right places. The reader finally gets to know that Tyler Durden and the narrator is one and the same person, but it leaves them with even more questions (the scene with a gun in the mouth and the scar of a kiss). We get to know that he is the one, who created fight clubs, worked on two jobs and is responsible for Project Mayhem. Tyler Durden is the narrator’s alternative personality that appears after the narrator seems to be sleeping. The protagonist decides to end his life, but after an explosion in his apartment and fifty fights in a fight club he is still alive. He cannot control himself and his Tyler-self, too, who says that Jack’s death should be inspirational and significant. So, they both appear on the roof of the highest skyscraper in New York. Tyler decides to blow up the Parker-Morris building as a part of Project Mayhem. Here the author returns the story line to the very first scene – the narrator is on the top of the building, but this time he is the one who holds the gun in his own mouth and makes a shot. The narrator thinks that he is dead, but the description of a setting reminds more of a loony bin. Whom the narrator wanted to shot – Tyler, himself or both? “When I pulled the trigger, I died. Liar. And Tyler died.” (Palahniuk, 210) I think the answer can be found in the second part of the book.
Work Cited
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. Print.
