Edward Norton finds his life a compete loss until he meet Tyler, the soap salesman

Rating: 9/10 (30 September 2014)

Fight Club is a rather dark drama filled with subtle comedy and with a rather dark ending. The ending is actually the most important scene in the movie and the director decided to begin the film with it too. However, he purposely leaves out the major twist you learn at the end. This is obviously done not to ruin the rest of the movie. However, the fact that you never learn the narrator's real name the entire movie is the most important part of this plot twist. When you learn that Tyler is actually just the narrator's mental projection, your entire understanding of the movie is changed. Tyler is the narrator's mental projection of what he wants to be. During the movie, the narrator's physical appearance worsens while Tyler's actually gets better. This was a consciously made decision by the director in the film. "We decided early on that I would start to starve myself as the film went on, while he would lift and go to tanning beds; he would become more and more idealized as I wasted away." The fact that the narrator's physical appearance degrades over the lapse of the film is an excellent choice to show how actually his mental state became worse and worse. This is not only because of his continuous insomnia throughout the film, but also for his own self-hatred for how average his life has become. This is why he eventually creates Tyler as an image of a true man and what he actually wants to be. What he wants to see in himself he envisions in Tyler.
Tyler is very masculine, handsome, and confident. All of these characteristics the narrator lacks. Tyler is what the narrator actually sees himself as becoming. He falsely sees partaking in these underground fight clubs to make himself more masculine. This is why Tyler's appearance becomes more ideal, while the narrator's worsens. He only sees himself become this more ideal person while in reality; he is not bettering himself at all. He quits his job, loses all connections to his friends and family, and completely loses track of who he actually is. The reason why the narrator creates Tyler is not only because of his hatred for his own lifestyle, but also how emasculate he felt in society. He has no confidence in his own self-image and who he is. When he goes to these self-help groups, he actually gains little confidence in himself seeing that there are actually people who are less of a man than he is and has bigger problems than he does. The first time he actually embraces this is when he is at the self-help group for men with testicular cancer. He convinces himself that he is also a victim. He is not actually a victim to the same circumstances these men face, but feels just as emasculate as they do. This is actually what relieves his insomnia. It isn't actually until he meets Marla that he sees how fake both of them are by going to self-help groups for their own pleasure that his insomnia worsens and eventually meets Tyler.
The physical appearance of the characters in the movie Fight Club is an unnoticed decision the director made that emphasizes a crucial point in the movie. The fact that the narrator projects what he wants to be through Tyler is seen through his appearance. Tyler becomes more attractive while in reality, he becoming worse off and just more battered and beat up as the movie goes on. The narrator never comes to grip with this until the final scene of the movie. Once the narrator realizes that Tyler is just what he project, he sees how far Tyler has taken his role. He finds a middle ground between Tyler's over masculinity and his low self-esteem as 'kills' Tyler once and for all.