Mischief, Mayhem, In Tyler We Trust: A Textual Analysis of Personality Disorders as Depicted in the Film Fight Club

Diagnosing an individual with a mental illness balances on a fine line between giving a life-long label and misdiagnosing. Mental illness is best viewed on a continuum allowing for a varying degree of severity. In the field, mental health professionals are faced with determining what signifies the appropriateness of diagnosing a mental illness. A professional’s judgment is impacted by their personal perceptions and observations, societies views and norms, and the patient’s history. The film, “How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity” demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing those who are mentally ill from those seen as healthy ( ). I will explore my reactions and thoughts regarding the participants’ experience as well as the mental health professionals. Additionally, I will share how this information is applicable to my future career in the field of social work.

Lead character, Bianca, is the main character and the lead protagonist of the movie, “The Duff.” Bianca is short, about 5’4’’, and is a little bit on the heavier side. She dresses for comfort and cares less about her looks and more about her friends and school work. The most worn shirt in her closet is her “party shirt”, a black cotton tee-shirt that has the word “party” printed on the front. If only one article of clothing was used to summarize her whole wardrobe, it would be this shirt. Bianca is often shown as very kind to the people that she cares about, going the full mile for anyone who needs it. In the beginning of the movies she was always at her friends sides making sure they were havening fun and feeling confident. She is an odd mix of secure and shy. Although she comes across and a secure girl, who does not worry about the opinions of others, she become very shy when she is around a boy that she has a crush on. When Bianca tries to talk to her crush, at the start of the movie, the most she could muster was a “Hey.” She is rather unpopular at school and is only know through her two friends that are considered very good looking. She only has two close friends, Jess and Casey, but is valued deeply by them, despite not seeing this at first.

Fight Club is a complex movie in that the two main characters are just two sides of the same person. Edward Norton’s character is the prototypical conformist consumer working a morally questionable office job to feed his obsession with material possessions. He works as a recall coordinator for a “major car company” and applies a formula based on profitability, rather than safety, to determine the necessity of a recall. Though never explicitly stated, he seems to be in his late twenties or early thirties and throughout the movie has a constantly haggard appearance because of his insomnia and fighting. Brad Pitt’s character is a carefree nonconformist and the manifestation of Edward Norton’s

In Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club the main character is in fact never named throughout the book. He’s never called by his name or even speaks of it. We’re forced to view in the 3rd person, the events and life of this character and the battle he endeavors with insomnia and the suspicions friends that he meets. Tyler Durden comes along when the narrator is in need of a friend and turns out being a terrible influence, but is his closest friend. It was his idea to start the fight club to let out frustrations and anger of everyday guys that want to walk into their boss’s office and upper cut them. Palahniuk’s usage of imagery, diction, and foreshadowing shows the physical, and psychological, battle that the narrator is enduring. The title of the novel suggest that the entirety of the story is about fighting. Though it is about fighting, it's not

The Film, Harold and Maude, which was released in the year 1971, follows a 20 year old boy, Harold, with a narrow view on life. He spends his time attending funerals of people he does not know and faking suicides in attempts to get his mother’s attention. She however finds his actions immature and foolish, thus showing the strain on their relationship. One day however, at a random funeral, Harold meets Maude, a 79 year old women with a zest for life. She is fun-loving and happy at all times. Their friendship grows as Harold’s mother simultaneously tries to find him a wife. Harold soon develops an intimate love for Maude that she reciprocates. Harold’s spirits are lifted and he breaks from his unhappy existence by leaving his mother to marry

David Flincher's movie, Fight Club, shows how consumerism has caused the emasculation of the modern male and reveals a tale of liberation from a corporate controlled society. Society's most common model of typical man is filthy, violent, unintelligent, immature, sexist, sex hungry, and fundamentally a caveman. In essence Tyler Durden, is the symbolic model for a man. He is strong enough to withstand from society's influences and his beliefs to remain in tact. Jack, the narrator, on the other hand is the opposite. He is a weak, squeamish, skinny man who has not been able to withstand society's influence; therefore, he is the Ikea fetish. Unlike Tyler, Jack is weak minded. Both Jack and Tyler are polar opposite models of

Fight Club is a movie based a man deemed “Jack”. He could be any man in the working class, that lives and ordinary life. The movie starts out giving an overview of his life, which consisted of a repeat of flights and cubicles. He is basically to the point of break when he takes another business flight and meets a man that calls himself Tyler Durdan. They instantly become friends and after an unfortunate explosion in “jack’s” apartment, he moves in with Tyler. One night after last call at a local bar, Jack and Tyler start fighting in the parking lot for no reason other than essentially to feel free and do something other than the norm. Later in the film this bar-back fight turns into a club run by the both of the men, or so it seems. At the

However, Albert Einstein says “Information is not knowledge.” Yes, the narrator knows many interesting stuff that are passed to him by Tyler, but in reality he does not have the true knowledge – that is the identity of Tyler Durden. “People are always asking; did I know about Tyler Durden.” The usage of the continuous tense of the word “asking” indicates that the action –of asking—is unfinished or incomplete. People are still asking and he still does not know.

Fight Club can be viewed with many interpretations, all of them true. It is a great love story. It is an anti-consumerism rant. It is a spiritual piece against materialism. It is anarchist literature. It is a commentary on our ‘lost’ generation. At first viewing of the movie, very little of this can be seen and it appears violent and chaotic. However much thought was put into providing the movie with depth and development that only become apparent after multiple screenings.

The classic 1996 film Fight Club is a social commentary about our generation, which is in many ways devoid of spirit and marked by consumerism. It is the story of a man's spiritual journey towards enlightenment in modern society and his attempt to find his place in the world. It stresses a post-modern consumer society, reveals the loss of masculine identity amongst gray-collar workers, and examines the social stratification marked by our developing society. It follows the life of the narrator, who is referred to as Jack, (Edward Norton) as he struggles with insomnia and feelings of inadequacy in his desperate search to find meaning in his own life. The film, although

Tyler and the narrator focus on being different and not conforming to the world around them, however, they conform to Fight Club and the ideals

Tyler is so aggressive and gets the narrator to hit him and the secret society of the Fight Club begins. This club creates a means to escape the reality of every day life, and a society controlled by consumerism. These male participants in the secret club want to feel alive again and use fighting as mans to achieve their

     For the following analysis, I will be discussing the movie Fight Club’s two main characters. They are “Jack” played by Edward Norton, and Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt. However the twist to the movie turns out that Jack and Tyler are the same person and Tyler is Jack’s real name. Tyler the character is everything that Jack the character is not. The story narration is provided by the protagonist of “Fight Club,” “Jack.” The ambivalent protagonist, who only refers to himself as “Jack.” An ambivalent protagonist, usually the main character, is someone the audience likes, but who possesses character flaws.

Fight Club is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk. This is a story about a protagonist who struggles with insomnia. An anonymous character suffering from recurring insomnia due to the stress brought about by his job is introduced to the reader. He visits a doctor who later sends him to visit a support group for testicular cancer victims, and this helps him in alleviating his insomnia. However, his insomnia returns after he meets Marla Singer. Later on, the narrator meets Tyler Durden, and they together establish a fight club. They continue fighting until they attract crowds of people interested in the fight club. Fight club is a story that shows the struggles between the upper class and lower class people. The upper class people here

Initially, the narrator is finding an outlet for the daily pressure and to improve insomnia, and Tyler Durden to him represents this authority-figure who could make everything possible for him and someone who has everything under control. Overtime, the narrator’s reliance on Tyler Durden has only grown stronger. Therefore, it is during the sudden disappearance of Tyler Durden that the narrator is able to get a clear picture of the chaos and disaster they have caused. Together with the narrator, Tyler Durden has created Project Mayhem, a countrywide criminal organization, which prompts anti-consumerism through carrying out vandalism, making mischief, and attempting to reform others through violence. The narrator has lost his job, his boss is dead, police are looking for him, and now Tyler Durden is pushing a gun in his mouth while waiting for the financial centers to blow up. To the narrator, the biggest disaster isn’t the destruction that they have done, but rather, it is the internal conflict with the other personality, Tyler Durden. Therefore, with nothing to lose, he pulls the trigger and shoots himself, with the intention to kill Tyler, to bring an end to this chaos and disaster. “’It’s only after you’ve lost everything,’ Tyler says, ‘that you’re free to do