Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club

In Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk discusses how the current definition of the American Dream is tied to the concept of pursuing economic wealth and materialistic items. To demonstrate the issue, Palahniuk gives us a personal story of a victim who suffers from consumerism. Palahniuk writes about a young nameless man who says, “And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue” (43). In this quote, the author is referring to the narrator who reflects on his life at his apartment after a long day at work. The narrator is frustrated with his life and has a self-identity crisis because he feels like he does not fit

In reality, consumers are only purchasing items to give themselves short term happiness but in the long term, purchasing items proves to make us feel empty and unfulfilled. As Americans, we should be pursuing minimalism or in other words, we should only be buying items that are necessary to our survival. This is one of many main reasons why Tyler Durden forms Fight Club and Project Mayhem, which is because he believes that this consumer-based culture is destructive to our society. In a way, consumerism is an endless cycle of propaganda proposed by companies advertising their products to consumers causing them to believe that they need or want these items but in reality they don’t. Thus, consumers are “trapped” in this concept and will work jobs that they hate but pay well just to support their lifestyle in this harmful culture. In a sense, materialism has become the center of our identity because our society defines an individual by what items he/she has. Likewise, materialism is taken to the extremes when our human body parts are seen as tools to make money. Palahniuk writes, “The truth. We made soap out of