Each character created in the narrator’s dream embodies distinct unconscious
desires of the narrator himself. The character Tyler Durden definitely counts as one of the
most important creations in Fight Club, whose role compensates the narrator’s insomnia.
During his interminable flights, the narrator began the adventure with Tyler Durden:
during one of those incessant takeoffs and landings from business errands (Palahniuk 25).
With Tyler’s vivid appearance, the narrator can perfectly escape the restricted, rule-domi-
nated world during day time.
Tyler’s personality directly reflects the unconscious desire of living with deficien-
cy of personal responsibility for the narrator under his tedious routine, as chaos and
impulse-driven lifestyle represents exactly the antithesis. Only if it was dreamlike, would
the narrator “passed an amount of urine into at least one of your many elegant fragrances
(Palahniuk 82)” and then blackmails the head of the Pressman Hotel, saying that he has to
pay him or everyone will know that the Pressman Hotel is "where the richest people in the
world ate pee (Palahniuk 114)”, or “made soup out of it. Her. Marla’s mother. (Palahniuk
93)”.
The two main incidents regarding to Tyler can clearly show these features of him:
the foundation of Fight Club and Project Mayhem. These two main events have an unex-
pectedly unanimous ground rule - “The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about
fight club. (Palahniuk 48)” “The first rule about Project Mayhem is you don’t ask ques-
tions about Project Mayhem. (Palahniuk 119)”. Tyler proposed the idea of establishing
and expanding fight clubs since beating each other up in fight clubs seemed to content
him in a way of expressing themselves with no responsibilities taken by anyone. “You
don’t say anything because fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club
starts and when fight club ends. (Palahniuk 50)”. Eventually, fight clubs could not fulfill
Tyler and his adherents’ ambitions anymore, so they have to start a revolution to com-
pletely destroy the dominant culture in place and embark a new one with no rules with the
birth of Project Mayhem. In the narrator’s words, the pursuit of “Organized Chaos. The
Bureaucracy of Anarchy. (Palahniuk 119)” is seen as paramount. “The goal was to teach
each man in the project that he had the power to control history. We, each of us, can take
control of the world (Palahniuk 156).” With the lack of remorse and impulse-driven
impact, this project soon expands with a speed that only can appear in dreams. Mean-
while, Tyler has become more and more rapacious. “This is my world, my world, and
those ancient people are dead (Palahniuk, 115).”