Our hero is a nameless man representing the average middle-aged blue-collar worker. He is a man who, like all others, strives to become his perfect vision of himself. His adventure is his struggle with life. Like many people, he lives a life of false pride and meaningless possessions. He cannot sleep and is beginning to lose his grip on reality. He needs an escape.
    He is pushed into his internal adventure when he finds himself at a group therapy session called “Remaining Men Together” for men with testicular cancer. He went there for reasons unknown. He didn’t really have cancer. Maybe he wanted to see people who suffer as he does. During “crying” time in the session, he lost all hope in life and let go. He cried hopelessly and for a strange reason he felt perfectly content and free. That night he slept for the first time in a very long time. Although he didn’t know it then, this was the beginning of the biggest change in his life.
     He continued to go to other group therapy sessions. Each night he let go, and it let him sleep at night, or so he thought. What was really happening when he thought he was sleeping was he became another person. He became Tyler Durden. Tyler was the perfect image of himself, and since he had lost all hope, he was free to become him. He was not aware of this quite yet. For about a year he went to groups and became Tyler at night. Tyler had a completely separate life now. But this was just the beginning of the man’s (or Jack as he will be referred to from now on since he has no name) journey toward enlightenment.
     Then one day at a group session a girl walked in, Marla Singer. She was a liar just like he was. She didn’t have cancer or anything like that; she probably went for the same reason Jack did. She began to go to all the same groups that he did. For some reason, knowing that she was lying made him unable to cry, and hence he couldn’t sleep again. So he needed another way to become Tyler Durden and let go. He needed to have Tyler in his life in order to have direct contact with him, that way Tyler could mentor him better and help him obtain freedom. So Tyler became his mentor. They met on an airplane on a business trip, but they really didn’t meet, they were the same person, but Jack didn’t know that. They became acquaintances and that was that for the time being.
     The man was completely forced into his adventure when his condo exploded on accident, or so it seemed. “Tyler” had actually rigged it to explode, this was his threshold, and Tyler had pushed him into it. This forced him to let go of his meaningless possessions and “perfect” lifestyle. Now he had let go of hope, and let go of his meaningless life style. He was on his way to being completely free.
     His first challenge was to find somewhere to stay, and what better place than with his mentor. He called the number on the business card Tyler had given him on the plane when they met. They got together at a bar and talked. Finally, the man asked Tyler if he could stay at his house. Tyler agreed but asked for a strange favor that was very important in his adventure. Tyler asked Jack to hit him as hard as he could. After much argument due to the oddness of the request, he hit him. They go into a big fight but they were not mad at each other, they fought just to fight. This fight was Jack’s new release, he let go as he fought, and that was his group therapy, he no longer needed to attend the meetings. Two men saw them fighting and were a bit surprised at the sight of a man beating himself up, but they didn’t mention it and Jack and Tyler left.
     Tyler’s house was an old abandon house in the middle of an industrial area. It stunk and nothing much worked. This was where he had been living at night when he became Tyler since one year ago or so. After a while of living there as “Jack” and realizing it, he got used to it; he let go of his dependences and became content without them. He was well into his adventure now; he was becoming Tyler Durden. This new adaptation was the outcome of his challenge of letting go of his materialistic lifestyle.
     Many more obstacles were placed in front of Jack in his journey, the biggest one being the unexpected appearance of Marla Singer. Tyler became active with Marla and began to ignore Jack. This was a great challenge that helped him let go of hope. Jack’s entire life he had been dumped and forgotten, and now it had happened with Tyler, he had forgotten about Jack. This brought him to loose hope in those people important to him, he felt rejected by everyone he ever depended on and that was a good thing in his journey. Rejection may sound like a bad thing and it is, but the effect of Jack’s constant rejection was freedom from his constant dependence on people. Most people never do anything without the implied approval of friends, colleagues, bosses and often strangers who happen to be witnessing it, only because they rely on these people’s friendship. Jack was now free to do what he truly wanted to without worrying about the approval of people. He now had the ability to do what every human wishes he could do, the ability to act without a second thought, without regret, “the ability to let that which does not matter, truly slide.”
     Jack and Tyler were not in the adventure for only themselves, however. They realized that there were many people just like them, and they wanted in. The two men that saw Jack and Tyler fighting told other people about it and people showed up the next time it happened and asked to be included. Jack and Tyler helped other people let go and be free if only for a few minutes during a fight. More and more people wanted to be a part of this “fight club” that they had inadvertently started and Jack and Tyler decided to make it official, which means only to give it a name. They began to hold the fights in the basement of the bar instead of in the parking lot, they made rules and held it at a scheduled time, and they named it none other than “Fight Club.”
     The people who came to Fight Club loved it, they had a chance to be free for a while, once a week, all thanks to Jack. These people loved this new release so much that they followed it like a religion, they would fight to protect it, and they praised Jack for giving it to them. So Tyler decided one day to help these other men obtain the freedom he was trying to obtain himself. He gave them “assignments” to do that would bring them to let go of their own lifestyles and hope. He gradually increased the severity of the assignments and they were reeking havoc among the city. This was also an attempt to help the entire city let go. By destroying personal property and vandalizing, they were taking away what the people depended on, they were helping them all let go and be free. This was one of Jack’s biggest accomplishments, but it also severely slowed down his own progress, but he was reaching thousands of people and helping them.
As Fight Club grows and the assignments are being done by the hundreds each night, Tyler decides they only thing to do is to step Fight Club up a notch. Tyler created a terrorist organization with a mission called Project Mayhem, which was basically the same thing as the previous “assignments” only to a much larger scale. This was when Jack reverted from his adventure and changed course a little, but he did not completely fail. Even though Jack was the one who had started Fight Club and Project Mayhem, he didn’t know it. He didn’t know project mayhem even existed until he saw a major assignment on the news and asked Tyler about it and became very angry with him about not being told about Project Mayhem and not being included.
      Jack began to disapprove of Project Mayhem right away for some reason. He went back on his journey toward freedom and argued the Project. In order to bring Jack back to his journey toward freedom, Tyler purposely tries to get in a car accident and forces Jack to let it happen regardless of the fatal danger. This didn’t help very much in getting Jack back on track. He still argued Project Mayhem and refused to let go once and for all.
One night, Tyler left to set up a major project that would free most of society, and when Jack found out about it, his biggest challenge yet came around. He found out that Tyler was planning to blow up all the credit card company’s buildings and free society from debt hence creating total chaos. He desperately tries to find Tyler but in his search he realizes that him and Tyler are the same person, then Tyler shows up. This is his abyss. Tyler explains that he is a figment of Jack’s imagination that he created to help him let go and be free. Jack passes out and becomes Tyler one last time. He ties up loose ends in the operation that night and wakes up as Jack the morning after. Jack realizes the whole plan and accepts that it is up to him to stop it. This is his atonement; he accepts the situation and attempts to stop it.
     In attempting to stop the whole thing Tyler shows up and tries to talk him out of it, when that does not work, he fights him. They fight their last fight and he really beats himself up. They go to a high floor to watch the operation take place and Jack realizes what he must do. This is his return, he realizes that the only way to stop Tyler is to stop himself. He tries to kill himself by shooting himself. In trying to do so, he proves that he really has obtained his goal of complete freedom and he has let go, and hence Tyler dies but Jack lives to watch the operation finally go as planned. His gift is his enlightenment. This return is a tribute to the idea that one must defeat his master before he has completed his training.