“The child is innocent and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes.”
If we continue that way, it could be boring. Because the answer to the question “Who is Tyler Durden?” is already done by this decryption tool called “Friedrich-Wilhelm”. We like this tool. We like the concept of “the child” instead of “the Ubermensch”. But we are now taking a different approach. It will be our personal approach. One may say Yes or No. One may find its own interpretation. First, we recommend reading the book or watching the movie. Done ? Then we may continue. This decryption approach refers to the first book/the movie, not to the sequel. We start with the Hero. This is the Narrator. Yes, the Narrator, not Tyler. In the first part we are introduced to the Narrator. We know he suffers from insomnia. As a treatment he is prescribed by a physician to visit support groups, now first Tyler appears for a tiny moment (did you see him?). What is happening this time hanging out with the support groupers? Spiritual awakening. Kundalini rising to the heart chakra. He learned to let go “every evening I died, every evening I was born again, resurrected”. Is his Insomnia the one and only disease the Narrator suffers from ? I do not think so. Why ? He opened his heart, and a new Person was introduced to us. We all want to know who Tyler is. Why do we not want to know who Marla is ? Is she good or evil ? The Angel or The Devil ? We do not run with the decryption tool “Christianity”. One word: pathological ! Did I already reveal too much ? We assume there is a hidden, much deeper disturbance inside the brain of the Narrator. It is a psychological disorder. So let’s run with a psychological decryption tool, maybe a psychiatrist. Sigmund or Carl Gustav ? Sorry Sigmund, we do think Carl Gustav matches better for us, we think he is the far stronger decryption tool. With the appearance of Marla Singer, the once before balanced forces get unbalanced again. Unstable pathological spiritual awakening. What is wrong with Marla ? What is wrong with the Narrator ? Insomnia comes back. And finally our Tyler appears in a somewhat stable way. With the possibility of communication (as with Marla). First in an airplane. We come to a key scene. The Narrator’s condo blew up. Notice the Yin-Yang table. Always two there are. He has 2 phone Numbers. Marlas and Tylers. First, he dialed Marlas. And hung up - no…he does not want to go to her ! The key scene: he dials Tylers number. Nobody picks up. He is called back. “No incoming calls”. One can read this in the telephone booth. Because it is not an ordinary phone call. We know that Tyler comes out of the mind of the Narrator. But it is important what this call is. We give a hint by using the decryption tool called “Joseph”. It is the call for adventure. The hero, the Narrator, is called by divine forces. Not by a Superhero. Tyler is not just a simple Superhero. Not just a copy of a copy. Not just some cheap Hermes strutting around in golden glitter, who has nothing left of the original Hermes of the ancient Greek myth. One can see those superheroes everywhere. They are not divine. One superhero story after the other. With the missing divine, or just another cheap copy of a copy of them, in which one can barely feel the force behind them, the platonic idea of the divine. This fantasy story is different. Tyler is truly divine. Tyler makes the call. The call for adventure. The hero's journey begins. He is the constant guide in this adventure. Now there is Marla, too. Did one already answer it - who is Tyler Durden ? If yes - did one feel the contradiction in it ? If there is a contradiction, then either the interpretation is wrong or the decryption tool has to be updated. To be contradicted itself. That’s what my friend has been doing. It contradicted Carl Gustav - by saying: yes, the Narrator, as a male, can have an animus. Because the major influence if one has an anima or an animus is decided by one's sexuality. With the sex of their desire. Out of this decryption. We say. The truly sexuality of the Narrator is more homosexual nature. But why is there a Marla ? This is the pathological sexual story behind it. The divine wise will not only challenge the hero with the falsities of the society in which the hero lives in, also obviously with the hero’s sexuality and especially a constant confrontation with the limited, relative world out of time and space of the subject. Here it becomes difficult. This is a hypothesis. It is nowhere mentioned in the movie. There are only the hidden signs. But out of this decryption obviously. The Narrator suppresses his real sexuality. Maybe he rejects it out of the reason because he wants to be the man that he thinks society wants him to be. Heterosexual. But he simply is not heterosexual or not only heterosexual. Out of this “ I want to be normal”, “I want to desire a woman” derives also from the anima. Marla Singer. Most, if not all of the heterosexual men will have a “Marla Singer”. I have an anima. I do not call her Marla. I like her. Humans are all in some kind of anima/animus development. It is more a human-mind development. Most of them won’t call her Marla Singer. This is for me and other heterosexual men physiological, to run with the anima, for the Narrator it could be interpreted as pathological (out of perspective of this decryption). And this breeds big conflict. So we have 3 important characters. No, we have 4. One is missing. Who is Angel Face ? This is the only other real person (out of the 4), who is playing a main character. We just could also add Bob…to have 5 - in memory of a great musician and actor, his name was Michael Lee Aday or Meat Loaf…his name was Robert Paulson. We just want to keep it simple stupid. Tyler showed some special sympathy to Angel Face. This caused something in the narrator to explode with the words: "Inflamed feeling of rejection" - the anger at possibly no longer being preferred by Tyler ? Or the strong impulse to reject his own homosexual desire, because when the animus [as the divine counterpart] shows sympathy for another man - this is something special. In the most sophisticated and extremest form the divine counterpart will say: “This. Is. Me. Love him”! And this is what the narrator rejects out of his existing thinking structures to become an ordinary normal man as a part of this society and move back into a condo with Ikea furniture and…a woman. We want to go a bit deeper into that scene. My feeling is telling me it is overlooked. Underrated. It is a superb scene to explain the mechanism of how parts of the decrypting tool works. The reality filter. The best decryption tool to work with a great reality filter is called “Arthur”. one has to add some bites and bytes to have a profound result, e.g. simply copy and paste some data from the “Jiddu” tool, stir it, shake it, mix it up ! Let the own decryption tool evolve. Live your own myth. Works great! This refers more to the movie than to the book. One wants to be entertained. So we always have a picture, in a movie moving pictures of Tyler. In our need to be entertained we want to see a charming Brad Pitt. We have as a spectator a clear objectification of this imaginary friend. Is this in the so-called world of reality the same? I don’t think so. Not out of my experience. Physiologically there are only small intuitions with the anima/animus. In one’s development with the anima/animus the grade of objectification minimizes and gets down to magic zero in the “pure wise” in which spirituality finds its crown. This whole transcendence feels like shifting forces. With two threshold ranges. Like the endurance power zones. They blend in with each other and overlap. The decryption of a fantasy story has different goals. One of them is to ask how it could happen as a pure realistic story. Tyler shows some special sympathy to Angel Face.
“You choose your own level of involvement”, Tyler really wants to help, before this, the Narrator shows us his way of “Let’s slaughter Angel Face down “! So we all watched the movie, or read the book, this happened in a fight, which is not the core theme in “fight club”. All this fighting, as exciting and thrilling it may be, is secondary to the inner psyche story of the Narrator. Tyler offered the Narrator a way back out of the adventure into the real world. This is kind. The gift of the Wise. No matter if you call the Wise here Hermes or Tyler. In this case Tyler felt “ok…he needs a break. I let him “choose” to pass the threshold back into the real world”. Only that he could possibly have to realize his true nature, and out of this scenario, in the assumption Angel Face also feels desires for the Narrator, a happy end of this fairytale could have been written in that way: the Narrator and Angel Face finished Project Mayhem and they are all one happy family. Boring. We need that conflict in stories to make them thrilling. So the force of Marla intervened and Angel Face was butchered. Marla. The pathological piece in fight club. Obviously one can spin in their own imagination with several more or less tragic and boring happy endings of fight club. The one the movie and the book is offering us is obviously not happy, it is a tragedy, hanging out with “Miss Pathologic” and not with the “Divine masculine Wise”. So a truly happy ending would have been hanging out with the friend, just as friends. The art of living and dying. Together.
I had a primary much longer version, which had more content about the “Divine Wise”. Furthermore some additional thoughts about the ending of our “Nietzsche’s Zeitalter”, but hey, we want to keep it simple stupid !
The difference between fiction (the movie fight club) and reality (communication between the subject and the anti-subject. There are no visions, no hearing voices or anything pathological like that, there are just some clear intuitions, faint but stable. That is physiologic. Having visions of the anima for example,a clear visual appearance, like Odysseus at the end of his journey, that is a warning sign. Bad things might happen.
I am aware that there were discussions with the author about this theme and the sexuality of the protagonist. And I believe he commented it like that way: as if not only every homosexual authors needs to have a homosexual hero, so no, the Narrator is not gay. Ok, this is obvious a big contradiction, maybe let’s have him heterosexual, ok, then there are on other points contradictions. Furthermore can one interpret the unconscious rising and individuation process with Tyler as an archetype "Tyler" for itself to run with it. Like Jesus also is, like our friend Carl Gustav mentioned it, an own archetype. With that, with a bit of fantasy, if a heterosexual man runs with Tyler, let him go, let him run with Tyler !
Nonetheless, we let this all go through various decryption tools. And for us. The version above leads to the fewest contradictions. It is not complete. What would Tyler say about it? Let the chips fall where they may. But back to the initial question. Who is Tyler Durden? So if it is a homosexual or heterosexual Narrator. That is profanity. Tyler as the masculine wise. The anti-subject. That is divine. So maybe the Author made it a demand: One has to find out who Tyler really is, only if one sees this picture, I allow the Narrator to be the man who he is. Let’s give him a name ! We do say sorry about once insulting Tyler (he is not Ares, = Tarzan) and about spreading some darkness (it was not real), it is what it is, all just fantasy. And I have to say one more time sorry in advance, we will do it again by writing down our story. Only here on our Substack. Find the story about Clayton from Wisconsin.
Decryption tools:
Anima and animus - Wikipedia
The World as Will and Representation - Wikipedia
The art of living and dying | J. Krishnamurti (jkrishnamurti.org)
Hero's journey - Wikipedia
Kundalini - Wikipedia
Thank you for your interest. We continue to play this game, it is called communication with unconscious. It is the very much me who decided to step out of the shadow as "Tyler's big sister". That is why we have dedicated a chapter entirely to Tyler. As it should be more about our own interpretation and history, which is currently written down, here in this part only the cover stories, intermezzos and the final conclusion with many circles explained to bring the one thought to the end, attention spoiler, it is Arthur, which will then once again come out as Tyler, the Animus, Logos, and yes, it is again the me in this equation, which has instilled as Animus none other than humanity's greatest and smartest shadow hunter, the great philosopher Arthur, known for his pessimism.
The story of my "coming out" (as Tyler's big sister) : https://open.substack.com/pub/clab/p/touching-the-spheres-membrane?r=t942z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web