Joe Durden Quotes

Throughout Fight Club the audience becomes acquainted with two characters: the narrator with the self referenced name of Joe, and his best friend Tyler Durden. With their first meeting, Joe was enamoured with Tyler. From his poetically spun words to the the unthinkable barbaric actions his thoughts eventually led up to, Joe soon wasn’t just a friend, but a captive to the mind of Tyler Durden. Throughout the story Joe compulsively follows Tyler’s wishes, eventually not able to run away from his friend, eternally caught in the web of obedience. Joe once said that “The cancer I don’t have is everywhere now.” What he didn’t realize is that that cancer that he could not see, was Tyler Durden slowly growing from him. And the moment he realized
Many would say that he was ignorant to Tyler’s actual nature, but Foster has said in his novel How to Read Literature like a Professor, “Not knowing who or what is ignorance, which is no sin; ignorance is simply the measure of what you haven't got to yet.” Saying that what Joe did wasn’t wrong, he was just conflicted on how he should proceed with the situation. “Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want to be the same. Individually, we are nothing.” They were both caught in the same materialistic world of consumerism, mind numb from society's standards and social norms. Soon realizing this Tyler told Joe that his life was slowly ending one minute at a time, telling him “If you don’t know what you want...you’ll end up with what you don’t.” Here Tyler steers Joe’s mind into the direction of not what society wants him to be (which is what he has been conforming to to years) but to what he wants to be, what he could be. This is how Tyler made Joe into a follower, created fight club, and successfully altered his mindset into one that looked at the world in an entirely new