Fight Club: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Suddenly, there’s a secret group within the secret group. Project Mayhem is like fight club, but it’s more violence and with a larger social plan. Where fight club members use violence to change themselves, Project Mayhem members use violence to change the external world.

Tyler encourages his followers to target places that are symbols of civilization at its best, such as museums and skyscrapers. Tyler’s message is that by accepting pain and violence in their own lives, his followers can become powerful—powerful enough to “control” the world. The problem is Tyler’s idea of control is pure anarchy and violence—and this is no longer violence as a means of self-fulfillment or enlightenment, but violence inflicted on unwilling victims.

Much as the Narrator and Tyler founded fight club because they were frustrated with their lives, Tyler founds Project Mayhem after the Narrator expresses his frustration with the monotony of his new life (i.e., his life as a fight club member). The Narrator wants to direct his aggression at other fight club members, as usual, but Tyler wants to turn his own aggression outward and use it to attack civilization itself. Note also that once again the Narrator’s fantasies or dreams lead into Tyler taking concrete action.

Remember the six white shirts and two pairs of black trousers the Narrator wore on his old business trips? Palahniuk implies that Project Mayhem is becoming as authoritarian and collectivist as the corporate culture that Jack and Tyler were trying to rebel against in the first place, as symbolized by Project Mayhem’s new “uniform.” Tyler’s talk of “space monkeys” suggests that his followers must be willing to die for a “greater good,” though he never properly explains what this greater good is.