The Narrator prefaces his account of Tyler forcing
the Quicky-Mart attendant at gunpoint to follow his dreams with the statement, “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for
everyone drops to zero.” This brings up the frailty of human existence and the
fact that everyone has a hourglass that will one day run out of sand, and
that’s it, they will be dead, forevermore. Interestingly when people are
presented with their demise their primal survival instinct is activated and
they will avoid their death at all costs. This phenomenon is portrayed in the
attendant’s willingness to follow Tyler’s instructions and work toward becoming
a veterinarian in order to preserve his life, which Tyler has threatened to take
away. Darwin is known for his studies and hypotheses on the survival of the
fittest and the fight or flight response, which state that the most capable
will survive and when one is confronted with a problem they will either combat
it head on or flee, both of these are crucial in analyzing human survival
behavior and evaluating Tyler’s theories. When Tyler confronts the attendant,
the attendant chooses to flee rather than confront the crazy Tyler Durden, a
calculated form of self-preservation that weighed his chances of survival
against a man who is holding a gun and who talks to himself. In contrast the Narrator
chooses to fight his boss when his job is threatened, and even goes so far as
to beat himself up and frame his boss, to preserve his income. On the most
basic level everyone is driven by self-preservation, an evolutionary trait
generated to ensure the survival and continuation of the human race as a whole.
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