Fight Club informational website
Masculinity
The narrator had lived a dull life working a 9 to 5 job that he didn’t like, he was unhappy and doing what he’s told (at his job) and he had developed insomnia. His doctor recommended going to support groups and he went to plenty without crying or feeling anything (page 20; last 3 lines).
Then there was the group for testicular cancer “remaining men together”, where he finally cried and felt emotional. That’s because being big Bob had grown bitch-tits, lost his balls, his family etc. and that kind of emasculation (which is one of the themes later) may have resonated with the narrator causing him to finally cry and feel free. That support group and others then became a remedy to his insomnia allowing him to finally sleep.
Consumerism
The narrator was a “victim” to consumerism, filling his entire house up with items from stores like IKEA, for the sake of it. When his house had burned down he was distressed about losing something he had spent his entire life collecting. The police suggested the possibility of arson and if that’s the case, then no other than the narrator or should I say Tyler caused the fire.
That fire burned down all the items the narrator had, kind of like freeing him from consumerism.
As the doorman said, “A lot of young people don’t know what they want. They think they want the whole world. If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t want” (page 46).
Conformity
We found that the narrator is a conformist, living his life how society expects him, doing a 9-5 job, an average Joe in a standard home with IKEA furniture and so on, while Tyler is the opposite.
Tyler has obvious parallels to the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who “formulated” cynicism.
Diogenes pissed on the streets, Tyler pissed in his customers food, Diogenes lived in a barrel, Tyler lived in a shithole. Tyler and Diogenes are non-conformists, while the narrator was a conformist.
Violence – primal instincts
After the narrator’s house burned down, Tyler offered to let the narrator live in his house on one condition, if the narrator punched Tyler. That led to a fist fight between the two. The two presumably enjoyed fighting since they fought again and again and again and over time more men gathered and they gathered the attention of other men, which sparked started the fight club.
The reason for fighting may be to revert back to our primal instincts, the survival of the fittest.
We know that Tyler wants to destroy the society as it is and revert it back to the ancient times so that makes perfect sense.
Tyler and the narrator are opposites living in the same vessel and there are many more layers to their characters, those were just the tip of the iceberg.