Fight Club Film Theory: Tyler Durden Isn't The Only Character Who Doesn't Exist

2. The Battle For Jack's Psyche

As mentioned, Marla and Tyler are two elements of the same whole - the "mother" and "father" fighting for dominance of Jack's mind.

Tyler represents a new masculine "ideal", rejecting the status quo of the Calvin Klein male and building a new kind of aspirational figure, albeit one that's fundamentally angry and destructive.

Conversely, Marla is a manifestation of guilt, anguish and regret, as well as the basic human desire for intimacy, which at the beginning of the movie Jack has effectively been stealing from the terminally ill.

Tyler abhors the more sensitive and in-touch future that Marla might present to Jack, while Marla attempts to tame the angry hyper-masculinity that Tyler teases out of him.

Throughout the film a back-and-forth of wills takes place as each persona fights to win Jack over, and as one prevails, the other one weakens. This is evidenced by the scene where Jack chews out his boss with a clear influence from his dealings with Tyler, causing weakness (i.e. a fear of breast cancer) in Marla.

Jack and Marla even discuss this dynamic in the kitchen of the Paper Street house, where Marla mentions how both she and Jack are weak people attaching themselves to a "stronger" entity, and it's ultimately a not very-strongly coded message about these three jostling personalities.

Jack feels the push-and-pull early on in the film after his apartment is blown up: he initially calls Marla but quickly hangs up and ultimately decides to "activate" Tyler by calling him.

But the further on the story goes and Tyler's influence over Jack increases, the more dishevelled Marla becomes as her own influence deteriorates.

She starts the film off looking relatively well-groomed and appealing, while Tyler is nowhere to be seen, but in the second half of the movie she looks ever-more tawdry and hopeless, while Tyler reigns supreme.

And yet, if we put the thematics to the side for a moment, the real key behind the theory just might come down to the film's indelible final image...