The Man Child Antichrist

A man child is a person who is a physically mature man but still has the emotional maturity of a child. Almost throughout the entire movie of Fight Club we see grown men acting like children; we see them riding a bike indoors, sleeping in bunk beds, having imaginary friends and treating real drama and violence as cartoonish or fake. In one series of scenes we see guys passing rumors around like they were at a cafeteria lunch table saying things like "did you know," and "I heard that he" in reference to Tyler Durden. We see these men making dick jokes, like splicing porn in children movies, and obsessing about their father issues. They form a "no girls allowed club." They do not accept the consequences or responsibilities for their actions like an adult would. They are man children.

It's easy to recognize the familiar traits of the man child lifestyle, there is sex without intimacy or love, there's working to buy stuff like furniture but not working to provide for a future and a family. The narrator says veiled but explicit things  such as "I can't get married, I'm a thirty year old boy" and "I'm six years old again." He talks about having a fridge full of condiments but no food to eat which is often associated with unencumbered youth not thirty year old adults

Another sign of this arrested development, of being stuck in boyhood, is the inability for healthy intimacy even beyond sex. The narrator labels relationships as a weaker person latching onto a stronger person not as a complementary pairing. The physical combat becomes an insufficient replacement to physical intimacy. An undeniable sense of brotherhood is formed through the only means available: violence.

The narrators job brings him face to face with death which he is too immature to process. Part of growing up is accepting our own mortality. The narrator tries to figure out how to face death by going to support groups for moribund people. Sleep becomes a metaphor for death and the character's insomnia a stand in for his own nonacceptance of his own eventual death . This is how Tyler Durden is created. His fear of death from an unlived life makes him pursue all the dangerous and fun things he considers "living." In the narrator's first meeting with Tyler, Tyler tells the narrator to "accept his fate." This is misguided because stupid and dangerous behavior is not living because living is adding meaning to life. It is our relationships, love and legacy which give life our value not cheap thrills in the face of death.

We start to see the break between the narrator and Tyler Durden when it comes to Marla. Tyler uses and exploits Marla as a play thing for amusement but the narrator feels the need to protect Marla and to look out for her safety and her well being. Whenever Marla is in danger or is vulnerable the narrator shows up. She spurs the character into to growing up and becoming a man. The movie ends with the narrator and Marla holding hands, a show of physical affection. 

Compared their first meeting, the last meeting of the narrator and his imaginary friend, Tyler, involves the narrator looking at an instrument of death, a gun, with his eyes open with the intended effect of making Tyler disappear. He is facing death and accepting his own mortality which forces Tyler out of existence.

While the narrator is coping with his own immature fear of death he creates what can be described as his own religion. He becomes an antichrist which is defined as someone offering salvation but who is not Christ. He refers to his followers as "God's unwanted children." When one member of the group dies, they bury him while chanting his name sounding like a form of prayer. In another scene he takes a beating as a sacrifice to save the existence of Fight Club and is carried away, bloodied and bruised, in the Jesus Christ pose. This sacrifice wasn't to save their souls or bring peace but to continue violence and immaturity. This makes Tyler Durden an antichrist, the savior of the man children who participate in Fight Club.

In the end we can say the narrator's soul is saved by rejecting Tyler's teaching and embracing an adult life with Marla.