Fight Club

The Narrator wakes up in the shell of his old apartment. He reaches a hand between his legs and is relieved to find himself unharmed. He rides the elevator down, and his old doorman calls him Mr. Durden and treats him with respect for the first time since he met him. The Narrator calls Marla and asks her to meet him at the support group where they first met. He declines a free cab from a Project member, believing that if he walks then they will have a harder time getting their hands on him again. At the meeting, Marla slaps him across the face when the group partners off for therapeutic physical contact. She berates him, much to everyone’s shock, and accuses him of killing a man. At first, he believes she means his boss, but Marla reveals she followed him to a murder mystery dinner party and saw him shoot a man. The Narrator panics, because he knows Tyler will kill anyone who is a threat to Project Mayhem, and now that Marla is a murder witness, she is a definite threat. The Narrator urges her to get somewhere safe, and he confesses that he likes her. He leaves, determined to deal with Tyler.

As the Narrator leaves the group meeting, his mind is flooded with everything Tyler knows and ever did. He knows how to run a film projector, how to break locks, how to make explosives, and that Tyler rented the Paper Street house just before they met on the beach, as if he knew they would need it once he revealed himself. The Narrator finds a Fight Club that night and registers to fight all fifty men on the roster. During the first fight, he remembers killing Patrick Madden at the murder mystery party. Patrick was compiling a list of every Fight Club location, and therefore he was a threat. The Narrator remembers watching Patrick’s wife laugh as if his sudden death as all part of the party’s game, not knowing he was dead. In his second fight, the Narrator’s opponent breaks his collarbone. During the third fight, he is put in a sleeper hold until an old wound reopens. The Narrator remembers Patrick’s wife realizing her husband is dead, how the blood pooled around his body and soaked the hem of her skirt. The Narrator collapses to the floor, bloodied and broken, but he does not quit the fight. He wants to die.

The Narrator regains consciousness in his room in the Paper Street house. All his belongings have been removed. Tyler stands over his bed. He tells the Narrator that it is time at last for martyrdom, for the Narrator’s “big death thing” (203). Tyler plans to take the Narrator to the tallest building in the city, which is overtaken by Project Mayhem members, and blow it up, bring it all crashing down, with the Narrator dying inside in the process. Tyler threatens to hurt Marla if the Narrator does not cooperate. The narrative returns to the scene from Chapter 1, with Tyler and the Narrator on top of the Parker-Morris Building. Tyler has a gun in the Narrator’s mouth—only it is the Narrator holding a gun in his own mouth. Tyler assures him they will not really die. As the clock runs down, Marla arrives, accompanied by people from the support groups the Narrator attended. As soon as Marla arrives, Tyler disappears. The Narrator can hear the police helicopters closing in, and he urges Marla and the others to leave before the building explodes. Marla tells the Narrator she likes him, and she knows the difference between him and Tyler. As the helicopters get closer and the timer runs down, the Narrator recalls the explosives Tyler used: nitroglycerin and paraffin, a combination which some Project members used but the Narrator has never found successful. As soon as he realizes the explosion’s composition is likely to fail, the Narrator puts the gun back in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

The Narrator believes he is dead. He finds himself in a quiet, white-on-white “heaven” where there are rubber-soled shoes, and he can finally sleep. People write to him in this “heaven,” and they tell him he is their hero. They tell him he will get better. Angels bring him meals and medications. He meets with God, and God asks him why he caused so much pain, why he did not realize all people are special, sacred manifestations of love. The Narrator answers: “We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are” (207). God tells him he is wrong, and the Narrator says you cannot teach God anything. When he shot himself, the bullet tore through the Narrator’s intact cheek, leaving him with a blown-out, smile like an angry Jack-o-Lantern. Marla writes to him, and she says someday they will bring him back to Earth, back to her. The Narrator says that if there was a telephone in Heaven, he would call Marla and this time he would not hang up. That said, he does not want to go back yet, because every so often one of the “angels” bringing his medication has a black eye, stitches, or bruises, and they call him Mr. Durden.