Theme

     Theme. Such an abstract word. Every story has one, some more meaningful than others yet it's always there. In Mario, it's that love compels people to fight for others. In Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream", it's that no person should be treated differently because of his/her physical traits. In Fight Club, it's that material possessions are not important. In the beginning of the story after the Narrator meets Tyler Durden, he returns to his home on the 8th floor of a condominium. He used to spend all his earnings from his lousy day job as a car company accountant on luxurious furniture for his home. It's just a shame that when he arrived outside the condo, firetrucks were franticly trying to quench the flames of a massive wildfire eupting from his bedroom windows. All the thousands of dollars he had pumped into his stylish home, and for what? The beautiful, shiny wooden floor and the yin-yang styled coffee table, gone. His 60 inch flatscreen, gone. His bathtub with built-in jets for soothing bubble baths, gone. Everything he had cared about, gone. So now what did he have? Well, he had Tyler. Neither of them were able to afford a house, so stealing an ancient, moldy one on the side of the highway was their only option. Going from "riches" to rags was a big eye-opener for the Narrator.

The Narrator's condo, furnished with shag carpet and a yin-yang coffee table.

     One of the most memorable and impacting quotes in my opinion is "Losing all hope was freedom" (Palahniuk 288). I believe he is referring to losing the hope of life ever getting better, allowed him to become "free" and do whatever he wanted to do instead of what society told him he should do. It didn't matter anymore that he didn't have the fancy car or the sweet Caddy because now he had the Fight Club, something that he created himself. It was something he was proud of that couldn't be torched by a flame, and it was all that mattered.

The Narrator realizes his condo has been destroyed.