The author of Fight Club took an anti-consumerist approach in writing, and this was adapted into the film. The examples of classic social theories written by Marx, Weber, and Durkheim are obvious to anyone who has ever studied sociological theory. The book/film was not written at the same time as the theories, but rather shows that the theories predicted how society might evolve toward more consumerist communities. This proved true as evolution occurred and the population increased; creating a higher rate of supply and demand for raw materials. At the beginning of the film, the anonymous narrator who we will call “Jack” experiences alienation as shown in Marx's essay Estranged Labor “The worker becomes a slave. Someone is dictating to him how to do his job and he has no say in anything. would allow him to produce the products of his own desires. Jack travels a lot for work and feels that his job has isolated him from himself, his colleagues, and his place in society. The work he does focuses on production and not on building relationships on the job. He believed that if we could escape the need for goods, the need to make money for those goods, and somehow escape the societal structure that says we must do things and own things to integrate, then we would finally escape the iron cage. The problem is that to break free from these social norms, you would be giving up everything that is now considered necessary to survive. We don't NEED a house, or electricity, or phones, or other general "stuff". There was a time when people lived in caves, and that was enough to survive; with a primitive instinct. However, society has evolved and we now live in standardized houses, apartments and other structures. So even when you remove your materialistic possessions and live by these means, you remain in the capitalist society of the housing market. In a word; we can never truly free ourselves from iron