The Narrator never names himself throughout the novel, and no other character ever calls him by his real name either. Despite this, some readers call the Narrator “Joe,” on account of how he adapted the personified internal organs bit from a Reader’s Digest magazine, calling himself “Joe’s White Knuckles” or “Joe’s Enraged, Inflamed Sense of Rejection” (60). The Narrator starts off as a boring, complacent corporate drone who values his possessions more than he seems to value human life. When his apartment is destroyed, he frets over his broken furniture and damaged Audi more than he ever does over the possibility that someone might have gotten hurt in the explosion or by the fallen debris.

As his distaste for the actions of Project Mayhem increases, he finds himself outraged by the senseless loss of human life that the followers take no issue with. His attitude toward humanity shifts so dramatically that by the end, he is willing to kill himself to try to right some of the wrongs his other identity, Tyler Durden, committed. Although he survives shooting, the ending remains ambiguous as to whether Tyler survived—or if the two merged into one fused personality.