Fight Club

As part of the initiation process into Project Mayhem, Tyler plants a wet kiss on the back of each man’s hand. He then pours lye flakes onto the saliva mark, causing a chemical burn that scars in the exact shape of his kiss. This scar marks his followers and represents the intrinsic link between pain and pleasure that the Fight Club philosophy offers. While Tyler scars the first kiss is on the Narrator’s hand in a demonstration of achieving personal enlightenment, the fact that every person in Project Mayhem bears the same scar ultimately comes to represent the emptiness of Tyler’s vision. His followers sacrifice their individuality to join his ranks, and the lye kiss serves as a visual representation of that surrender.

The Narrator learns meditation while attending terminal illness support groups. At first, he does not put much stock in the practice, as he finds it easily corrupted by his anxieties about meeting Marla and being exposed as a fraud. Later, when Tyler pours lye on his hand to scar him, the Narrator retreats into a guided meditation that takes him through a trip to Ireland from his youth. While he does not see his old “power animal” anymore, the meditation does help him stave off the pain for longer than he thought.