Fight Club Interpersonal Communication free essay sample

Interpersonal Communication in the film Fight Club â€Å"You’re the most interesting ‘single serving’ friend I have ever met. † These are some of the first words that initiated the close, yet unorthodox relationship between Jack and Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club. The film follows the narrator (indirectly referred to as Jack) and the entire movie takes place from his perspective. This is an important factor when analyzing the relationship between him and Tyler, because we only see the events through Jack’s eyes. The relationship between these key characters is a reflection of Mark Knapp’s developmental model as shown in Adler Rodman (2012). (p. 205) In the film the audience can clearly see the three major stages, coming together, maintenance, and coming apart. I will show these stages and how they relate to the narrator’s development through the movie. The film begins with Jack, a businessman with a bad case of insomnia. His insomnia is a constant struggle for him throughout the movie, but it is not the focal point of his relationship with Tyler. The only cure to his insomnia is to join support groups for diseases and cancers he doesn’t have, but pretends to. By interacting with the people in these groups, he finds his catharsis through the guided meditation and the caring atmosphere. Then he meets Tyler Durden, where the audience witnesses the â€Å"coming together† stages between these two characters. (Adler Rodman, 2012) Tyler Durden is a traveling soap salesman whom Jack meets on a business trip. In the narrative, Jack refers to the items in his travels as â€Å"single serving† such as, single serving meals, single serving soap, and shampoo in hotels. Hence at the end of his first conversation with Tyler, Jack calls him a â€Å"single serving friend†. Tyler’s response insight into their future relationship â€Å"You’re clever, how has ‘being clever’ been working out for you? † Jack is constantly hiding behind his support groups and his clever attitude and Tyler isn’t afraid to expose Jack. This initiates the relationship between the two characters, Tyler sees Jack as a soul searching for enlightenment, where Jack sees Tyler as someone who it everything he isn’t. Due to unfortunate circumstances, Jacks apartment is destroyed, Jack finds himself in a bar with Tyler. Jack called this â€Å"single serving friend† because he had nobody else to go to. In the bar Jack and Tyler make small talk about the finer points of human existence. Jack’s life was wrapped up in his apartment, he had all of the material possessions he had ever desired, and he felt he was nearly complete. Tyler expresses to Jack to never be complete, stop being perfect, and let the chips fall where they may. He says â€Å"The things that you own end up owning you†. This theme resonates throughout the movie and is the cornerstone of the relationship between Jack and Tyler. At this point these two characters have experienced the experimenting stage, through this small talk Jack finds his twisted alter ego. Tyler is the embodiment of everything Jack is not, Tyler is spontaneous, enigmatic, confident and attractive. Jack feels like a drone going through life on autopilot. After leaving the bar Tyler makes an interesting proposition to Jack, he tells Jack to â€Å"Hit me as hard as you can†. Thus begins a chain of events that leads to the movies namesake, Tyler and Jack begin fighting each other, as well as including other random men into these fights. Tyler and Jack become the leaders of an underground ring of fight clubs. This first fight between these two characters creates an important bond. Neither of them had ever been in a fight before, they have never truly lived before. â€Å"How do you know if you’ve lived until you’ve been in a fight† Tyler says as he coaxes Jack. The relationship between Jack and Tyler is intensified through this fight, they experience a pure form of existence, and they both feel truly alive. The original purpose of meeting Tyler at the bar, was that Jack needed a place to stay until he could get a new apartment. Despite the original intent of having a temporary living arrangement, Jack doesn’t feel the need to leave Tyler’s house, despite the house’s level of disrepair. They integrate into each other’s lives, in this way they become very close friends not unlike brothers. They take the same night job, and they lie for each other when they have to explain each other’s wounds from fight club. After first meeting Tyler, and fighting at the fight club every Saturday night, Jack becomes cured of his insomnia. Through his experience of feeling more alive when he fights at fight club, Jack feels form of enlightenment. He integrates Tyler’s anti-materialistic philosophies into his own psyche; this leads him to have a false sense of a higher level of existence when compared to his fellow humans. Tyler sense’s Jacks false sense of enlightenment, and in order to pull Jack from his delusions he shows Jack what living really means. He takes Jacks hand, kisses it and pours lye (a key ingredient in making soap) onto the back of Jack hand. This initiates a painful chemical burn, from the saliva from the kiss and the lye, on Jacks hand and Jack rejects the pain. Jack uses the meditation techniques he learned in his support groups to shut out the pain. Tyler jerks him from his meditation telling Jack â€Å"This is the greatest moment of your life and you’re missing it! † Tyler desires for Jack to accept the pain, to acknowledge he his mortal and will die. The pain of the burning represents the pain of living, of being truly alive. Up until this point Jack was dead inside, his experiences in fight club made him feel alive, but it was only pre-enlightenment. â€Å"You don’t know how this feels! † Jack yells to Tyler. Tyler says nothing, he only shows Jack the back of his own hand and Jack sees a scar left from the same burn on Tyler. Jack finally accepts the pain and Tyler pours vinegar on the burn. Through this experience Jack and Tyler form an irreversible bond forged from mutual pain and the desire to truly live. This is the apex of their relationship in the film, and this is where Tyler and Jack start to grow apart. The chain of fight clubs that Jack and Tyler started gets turned into a cult, with Tyler as the leader. Tyler progressively begins to shut Jack out of the dealings in â€Å"Project Mayhem†, the cult/terrorist organization that sets up shop in Tyler’s house. This point in the relationship is where Tyler and Jack begin to grow apart just as in Knapp’s model Adler and Rodman (2009) (p. 207). At this differentiating and circumscribing stage Tyler turns his focus toward Project Mayhem, and largely ignores Jacks requests for inclusion in the organization. Due to Jack’s controlling nature Tyler reacts in an extreme way. He desire’s to break Jack of this nature, hence the avoidance. Tyler releases the steering wheel of a speeding car in which he and Jack are riding. At first Jack grabs hold of the wheel to prevent the possibility of a crash and possibly death. Tyler coerces Jack to â€Å"let go† not only of the steering wheel, but of Jacks fear of death, and desire to be in control. Despite his experience with the burning lye Jack is still holding on to the remnants of his old life, namely his sense of self-preservation. Jack eventually lets go of the steering wheel, and the car careens off the road. Tyler pulls Jack out of the burning wreckage, Jack has now realized that he has nothing to lose, and Tyler’s job is finished. In the morning after the crash Tyler is gone; this firmly establishes the avoidance stage between Tyler and Jack. Tyler is nowhere to be found and Jack literally searches the entire country looking for him. Jack finds Tyler, because Tyler is Jack. It’s at this point in the movie that we learn that both of these characters are one in the same, two different people living in one body. Jack created Tyler as a way to cope with the insomnia. Jack was never slept; when he was â€Å"sleeping† Tyler was living, leading the fight clubs and â€Å"Project Mayhem†. Tyler still exists, and he is tired of Jack dragging him down. â€Å"Hey, you created me. I didnt create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better† Tyler says to Jack. Tyler wishes to move forward and Jack is only getting in the way. Tyler wants Jack gone, but Jack isn’t going to allow Tyler too â€Å"kill† him. Jack no longer cares about his own life, his motivation is now to protect the world from Tyler. Upon realizing that he has the ability destroy his creation, Jack literally kills his Tyler alter ego. Through extreme, the relationship between Tyler and Jack is terminated in this way. An unorthodox end to an unorthodox relationship. Despite Tyler Durden and Jack being the same person, this film gives a great example of the relationship of two different people. Tyler is a separate person than Jack and both characters are played by different actors, in order to make this clear to the audience. Their relationship follows the building stages clearly, but in the film the coming apart stages aren’t as well defined. It isn’t until the car crash that Tyler and Jack truly enter the coming apart stage and at that point the stagnating phase is skipped and Tyler clearly avoids Jack. The termination of their relationship is also very symbolic, because Jack ends up shooting himself in the face in order to kill Tyler. They share the same body, so this is the only way to kill Tyler. In Jacks mind he sees that Tyler has been shot through the head, but in reality Jack missed his own brain, and the bullet exited through the back of Jack’s jaw. It’s important to note that when Jack shot himself, it’s enough of a traumatic event that his mind imagines the bullet killing Tyler, while Jack physically misses so he doesn’t actually die. The symbolism here it that when a relationship between two real people is terminated, the â€Å"relationship self† is in essence killed while the â€Å"independent self† survives. Though two people may bump into each other later in life, they meet as two separate entities, not as the entity they were when they had a deep meaningful relationship. After Tyler’s death Jack is truly free of the person he used to be, his relationship with Tyler was integral in shaping his new state of being. In this way the movie is analogous of how other people, and our relationships with them, shape our own lives.