buffet. This is the amazing miracle of death, and it should be so sweet” (Palahniuk, 35). In
this case, both concepts of life and death serve as pleasant thinking of the narrator
although possessing completely opposite connotations. Furthermore, the interwoven
perceptions for life and death, along with personal values of right and wrong, facilitate
and actualize the death of Tyler, which is similarly the brilliant recovery of the narrator
and thus a profound pursuit for one’s real self of deepest value. Similar with the ambiva-
lence in life and death, all the ambivalences experienced are eventually incorporated by
the narrator into the primary means to “break everything to make something better out of
ourselves” (Palahniuk, 52), the ultimate actualization of spirituality aimed at capturing the
deepest value in oneself.
As an extension on the issue of the “ambivalence of being”, a nuanced explication
of the term “ambivalence” is referred to. Through this interpretation that “ambivalence
refers to situations where a person experiences uncertainty or indecisiveness” (Crano &
Prislin & William & Radmila, 2011), the notion of “ambivalence” is brought to a further
depth regarding the protagonists’ lives in Fight Club. All manifestations of ambivalence,
which in this case refer to conflicting experiences and beliefs, such as life and death,
self-improvement and self-destruction, optimism and pessimism, peacefulness and
violence, are to some extent attributable to the internal mentality of uncertainty and
indecisiveness. Through such scope of viewing “ambivalence” as “uncertainty” and
“precariousness”, the inconsistent acts of the narrator throughout the course of the book
become explicable. His vacillation between the fake, blissful “reality” in the support
group and the authentic but torturing reality, his dissociation of personality to actualize his
undone spirituality, his indecisive oscillation and perplexity between himself and his
secondary personality—all these acts of ambivalence are, from certain perspectives,
engendered by his internal sense of intangibility. In short, the behaviors of the narrator can
be interpreted as attributable to a further connotation of “ambivalence of being”, which
implies the notion of “uncertainty” and “indecisiveness”.
The concepts are therefore incorporated. Both ideas, which are the spirituality and
the ambivalence of being, imply the most vagueness that is seemingly incompatible with
the concreteness and humdrum of life, but as well encompass indispensable element of a
person and constitute the worth of a living.