IKEA Furniture

The obsession that Edward Norton's character has with IKEA furniture is relevant to our current society in many ways. Especially around this holiday season, it is becoming more and more evident that we are slaves to advertisement. It may be an interesting peice of furniture, a new haircut, a clothing style, or anything really that grabs our attention and makes us think, "I have to have that." The consumers are being consumed by what is new and great, without thinking about why it's so special. Is it really that great of a coffee table? Or is it simply necessary becuase it's on the front cover of a catalogue, therefore making it the obvious thing to purchase? One way to look at it is, if you had never seen the coffee table in that catalogue, you never would have needed it. Nevertheless, because you did spot it, there was no longer a question; it was now a necessity, a need. As illuminated in Fight Club, this is absolutely ridiculous. The narrator explains that there is no inherent need for a cute yin-yang coffee table, but he still purchases it because he, like so many others, has been roped into a consumers nightmare.
The ironic part about obsessive consumerism in Fight Club is that the main character ends up incinerating all of these objects, without even knowing it. His subconcisous alter-ego (Tyler) was so tired of the excess material that he destroyed it. At first, the narrator is in complete disbelief, and is convinced that his whole life resided in that appartment and so now his life is over. Tyler, however, led him to believe that those unimportant mementos were hardly what life was about. While the narrator catalyzed the consumer spiral, Tyler strived to destroy it. It is these two competing forces in the characters head that made up the irony of the story. Neither one appears better than the other. One is groggy and blinded, while the other is violent and destructive.