Fight Club

Tyler has the Narrator type and make copies of Project Mayhem documents at work. His boss finds the original on the copier again, and this time the document in question is a list of personal effects all members of Project Mayhem are allowed to possess. Tyler calculates the exact number of people who can sleep in the basement if the space is furnished with triple-decker bunk beds. Applicants to Project Mayhem are required to bring black clothing, an army surplus mattress, a plastic mixing bowl, and personal burial money. When the Narrator returns home from work, he finds an applicant waiting on the front porch of the Paper Street house. Tyler explains the admission process and its roots in Buddhist temple practices: “You tell the applicant to go away, and if his resolve is so strong that he waits at the entrance without food or shelter or encouragement for three days, then and only then can he enter and begin the training” (129). While the applicants wait, Tyler and the Narrator take turns berating them to test their mettle.

The bunk beds in the basement fill quickly, and each man performs his role without question. Soon, Tyler stops coming home, and the Narrator is unsure what to do in his absence. One morning, the Narrator finds Bob waiting for admission on the front porch. He tries to ask Bob if he has seen Tyler, but Bob refuses to answer because of the rules of Project Mayhem. The Narrator calls the members of Project Mayhem “space monkeys” because of how dutifully they perform their simple little jobs. The members work the soil behind the house and grow a garden full of herbs and produce which are used in making soaps. Marla visits the Narrator every night, and they walk in the garden. One afternoon she is denied entry into the house by a Project member, but the Narrator does not come outside to intervene. The Narrator feels Tyler has dumped him, just like his father dumped him for a new family.

He begins attending new fight clubs, searching for Tyler at every meeting, but the club leaders all state that they do not know Tyler and have never met Tyler; their friends’ friends met Tyler and they started this chapter. Not even the leaders of Project Mayhem committees know where Tyler is, since he only communicates with them in rare telephone calls. There are rumors that Tyler is travelling the country to set up new chapters of Fight Club and new committees for Project Mayhem. The Narrator grimly recalls finding part of a human jaw in the garden while walking with Marla. He hides it amongst the plants before she sees.

The Narrator falls asleep at work, and he wakes to the sound of his office phone ringing. It’s Tyler. The Narrator is the only one left in the office. Tyler instructs him to go outside, where there is a car waiting for him. The Narrator smells gasoline on his hands. Some men from Fight Club are waiting with the car, a black and gold Corniche that the Narrator says looks like a cigarette case on wheels. There is a birthday cake in the front seat of the car. The Narrator asks if they are going to see Tyler, and the mechanic asks if that is a trick question. The mechanic philosophizes on God and fathers, and how Christian men living in America equate their fathers with God. He tells the Narrator about the new rules at Fight Club. It is possible Bob will soon run his own chapter, according to the other men in the car.

The mechanic soon begins driving erratically, swerving into the oncoming traffic, playing chicken with the speeding cars on the highway. He urges the Narrator to confess what he wishes he had done before he dies. When the Narrator says he would have quit his job, the mechanic momentarily stops swerving into the other lane. The mechanic asks the other Project members the same question, and although they all answer, the mechanic does not swerve back into his own lane in time. The car fishtails, hits a truck’s bumper, and veers toward a ditch. The Narrator tries to grab the wheel to pull them back into traffic, but the mechanic pulls it back toward the ditch again. The car goes off the road completely. The birthday cake is smashed in the accident, and its candles light little fires on the car’s interior carpets.

The mechanic calls the accident a “near-life experience” (148). The Narrator’s forehead is swelling from where his face hit the steering wheel and the dashboard when the car went into the ditch. As they drive to their destination, which the Narrator audibly speculates is a Project Mayhem homework assignment, the mechanic continues to wax philosophically about the needs of the men and women of this generation. He claims they are trapped by advertising and directionless because there is no great war or great depression. They are headed to the medical waste dump to collect fat for soap-making. Their goal is to fill the car with as much human fat as possible. The mechanic claims their venture tonight has a Robin Hood element to it, since the fat they are stealing comes from liposuction procedures performed on rich people. The fat will be made into soaps sold a twenty dollars a bar, and the mechanic delights in the knowledge that the only people who could afford soap that expensive are the same people whose fat they steal to make it.

The Narrator holds a gun to Raymond Hessel’s forehead. This is his homework assignment: Bring Tyler 12 driver’s licenses, representative of 12 sacrifices made to Project Mayhem. Raymond cries, and the Narrator wonders if the salt in his tears will adversely affect the gun. The Narrator assures Raymond that this is not a mugging, because this is not about the money in his wallet. Raymond carries pictures of his family in his wallet, and he is only 23 years old according to his driver’s license. The Narrator individually inspects every item in the wallet, including the library card, a video rental card, and a bus pass. He notices an expired student I.D. from a university, and he asks Raymond what he studied in school. Raymond studied biology, and the Narrator asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. At first Raymond only says he wants to go home, but when the Narrator presses him further, he admits to wanting to be a veterinarian. The Narrator returns Raymond’s wallet and tells him to go back to school and become a veterinarian, or else he would look up the address on the license he stole and come back to kill him if he was not making progress toward his goal. The Narrator is once again aware of how much his words sound like Tyler’s. As he leaves Raymond, he tells him that his dinner tonight will be the best meal he has ever had, and that tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of his life.