Character Info

[urnotyourfuckingkhakis]

» Name: Tyler Durden (with an occasional appearance of core personality, Jack)
» Fandom: Fight Club
» Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club
http://www.scribd.com/doc/51660549/Character-Analysis-of-Tyler-Durden-Rough-Draft
» Canon Point: After Fight Club started and members started to get assignments.
» Gender: Male
» Age: 28


» Orientation: Both Tyler and Jack are straight heterosexual males as seen in their interaction with Marla Singer. Marla was someone Jack met through support groups and while he despised her, Tyler began a sexual relationship with her throughout their canon. Tyler had very little regard for Marla’s emotions or well-being and gradually Jack began to pity her. It wasn’t until Jack began to understand that Tyler was up to something dangerous that his feelings of caring for Marla’s safety emerged. When Jack learned that he and Tyler were the same person, he then realized that all that time he’d been having sexual relations with Marla as well.

» Personality: According to psychological studies of Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder), an alternate personality is created by the core personality (Jack) as a result of some sort of early trauma. While this other personality (Tyler Durden) is aware that it is sharing the body with Jack, this does not go both ways. Therefore Jack is in the dark that he and Tyler share a body unless the alternate personality makes him aware. Jack unknowingly created Tyler Durden as a separate personality to help him handle stress and a large amount of self-loathing when he was unable to do it alone. Ultimately Tyler Durden is everything Jack has wanted to be: he is social, outgoing, bold, fearless and confident. Tyler wants for Jack to stop controlling his life, just let go and allow things evolve on their own.

Jack is a very introverted, timid, and organized individual while Tyler is literally his polar opposite: manipulative, apathetic, and craving chaos. While they share the same body, Tyler has 98% control over it. Tyler also is by definition, a psychopath – someone who can not physically or emotionally empathize with others. While Tyler has basic needs and desires such as wanting sex and success, he does not feel for others nor does he care how others feel, which can make him a very dangerous and selfish individual. Despite being able to literally put himself in someone else’s shoes, he does not sympathize with Jack, nor make excuses for his faults. Tyler’s only concern is for what will ultimately aid him in his end goal and getting what he wants.

Tyler Durden had been forming in Jack’s subconscious for some time before making himself known and meeting Jack. Tyler is free in all the ways that Jack isn’t- he is the person that Jack wanted to be and therefore when Jack wanted to change his life, Tyler was the key component that allowed it to happen. He was the one who blew up Jack’s apartment and all of his belongings that had kept him in the routine and organized life that was controlling him. The two started Fight Club as a sort of physical release of anger and frustration for men in secret. Like what Tyler did for Jack, it allowed men to be who they really wanted to be even if just for a short period of time. It was a released that let the men forget about their 9 to 5 jobs and responsibilities and feed into a primal desire to be aggressive and violent. Tyler quickly took advantage of Jacks’ weak psyche while he was building confidence and self-esteem from attending Fight Club. Leaving Jack in the dark, Tyler began to create fight clubs all over the country in the basements of dive bars and in warehouses.

Tyler has his own life (when Jack is sleeping he would use the body) working random jobs such as a being a caterer for a high end hotel, a movie projectionist, and a soap retailer. He was really a guerilla terrorist in these jobs: splicing in single frames of pornography into family films, contaminating food with his own bodily fluids, and using the fat from a liposuction clinic to make the soap he then sold to high end department stores. These were the initial ways that Tyler felt he was getting back at a society he clearly despised. Fight Club was Tyler and Jack’s creation when they fed on the aggression of men who led rather routine and empty lives. Once the members were loyal, Tyler had them recruited to do terrorist acts of vandalism against corporate America as well as assignments to stir up the lives of others. They would put up false propaganda around the city and start fights with random people on the street, but would lose the fight.

Tyler’s ultimate goal was to break down modern society with its consumerism and commercialism and restart things to the caveman era of hunter-gather type survival. He believed too much was being controlled in the world and spoke for the under dogs who he convinced had been lied to by the media. These men agreed that they were following a carrot on a rope in front of them, held by corporate America and they would blindly follow Tyler in taking down the higher ups. When Tyler developed Project Mayhem he was building an army for a purpose and greater good he wouldn’t disclose to anyone. The members of Project Mayhem were considered human scarifies to their cause. Their lives were “sacrificed” to restart society and their names are taken away so that they were just soldiers.

Despite the vandalism and destruction to large pieces of property, Project Mayhem never sought to harm or kill anyone intentionally. Even during their largest assignment of blowing up the skyscrapers of credit card companies, Project Mayhem does this at night when the buildings are empty. This is a very interesting element considering that Tyler is a psychopath. However as one he does understand the feelings and motivations of other people very well. In order to recruit and keep members, Tyler knew that while these men wanted to take down a society they had felt wronged them, they weren’t killers. The world he wants to create is very primal and almost post-apocalyptic. Tyler wants to create a sort of chaos that will shatter life as we know it with the only casualties being our lifestyles.

The rules Fight Club and Project Mayhem involve strict confidentiality and not asking questions. It is during the forming of Project Mayhem that Tyler takes nearly full control over Jack’s body and kept him completely in the dark, even prepping members for the scenario that Jack would try to sabotage their plans. Jack is only able to conquer Tyler when he can stand up to him and take his life and body back, proving to Tyler that he doesn’t need him anymore.

» Appearance: Tyler stands 6’3” with a very fit, toned, and tanned body topped with short and usually messy or spiked dirty blond hair. His blue eyes are striking and it would seem as if he has a constant smirk on his full lips. Jack on the other hand, when in control of the body, is pale with a very slim and smaller build. He brown hair is a simple short professional style, parted on the side with his dead brown eyes that seem as if he is only half awake wherever he is.

» Suitability: Tyler is actually an alternate personality of an individual with a “weaker” core personality called ‘the narrator’ in canon, but for convenience and clarity he will be referred to as Jack. Tyler has nearly complete control over the body and will only occasionally wake up in new places if Jack had come out to “use” the body and moved him. Tyler sees everything Jack sees, but when Jack isn’t asleep he sees himself watching Tyler and being by his side, often conversing and interacting with him as if he weren’t inside his head. Anyone who would see Jack talking to Tyler would simply see Jack speaking to himself or empty air. Unless Tyler is in full control of the body, he isn’t seen. It is important to note that Tyler does have the ability to put Jack out of the consciousness and sort of knock him out so that Tyler can do as he pleases with the body. The reason Tyler is chosen by Atia rather than Jack is because Jack is a very emotionally unstable individual, while Tyler will be able to adjust and handle the new environment they have been placed in. Tyler will also thrive on the concept of having to use sex as a tool for survival.