American Psycho

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This article is about the book. For the album by The Misfits, see American Psycho (album). For the single by Treble Charger, see Wide Awake Bored For the film based on the book, see American Psycho.

Image:AmericanPsychoNovel.jpg The novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is a first person narrative describing episodes in the life of a wealthy young Manhattanite and self-proclaimed serial killer. The novel was a sensation on its publication in 1991, owing to its violent and sexual content. A film adaptation was released in 2000.

Contents

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

American Psycho is set in the late 1980s, mainly in Manhattan, and gives an account of roughly two years in the life of Patrick Bateman, the novel's protagonist and narrator. Bateman, 26 years old at the beginning of the story, relates his antics as a serial killer, although the reliability of his narration is called into doubt toward the end of the novel.

Coming from a privileged background - the character is a graduate of Philips Exeter Academy and Harvard (class of '84) and works as a Wall Street banker at the fictional firm of Pierce & Pierce - Bateman has become the image of the 1980's yuppie.

Image:AmericanPsychoBook.jpg In the novel, Bateman describes how he kills and tortures a number of people, including:

  • Beautiful young women ("hardbodies"), never older than Bateman himself, whom he punishes for being what they are: friends or former friends of his. Examples are his ex-girlfriend Bethany, prostitutes, and escort girls.
  • Business rivals, particularly a man named Paul Owen (Paul Allen in the film version), whom he kills in his own apartment.
  • The poor, homeless and unemployed men he chances across in the streets of Manhattan, whom he refers to as the "genetic underclass." For example, an African American beggar whom, on a whim, he blinds and whom he meets again at the end of the novel.
  • People from different ethnic backgrounds (apart from the beggar mentioned above, a Chinese delivery boy, whom he mistakes for Japanese).
  • Innocent people he randomly comes across in the street, including a young boy he stabs at the zoo in Central Park, a gay man with a dog, and a saxophonist.
  • At one point in the novel, people he shoots while he is being chased by the police (including a taxi driver, a policeman, a night watchman, and a janitor).
  • Animals such as dogs and rats.

Unlike many real-life serial killers, Bateman lacks a particular or consistent methodology. He tortures and kills his victims in a variety of ways which are often outrageous, using a wide variety of implements ranging from guns and knives to power tools and live rats, amongst others. It is also interesting to consider those whom Bateman chooses to spare on being presented with the opportunity to kill. Three prominent examples are his secretary Jean, his fiancée Evelyn Williams, and a gay friend and coworker, Luis Carruthers. Perhaps he is not able to kill any of them because they are all in love with him (doubts are allowed concerning his fiancée).

Greed, envy and disgust - along with his murderous rage and the sadistic pleasure he takes in killing - are Bateman's dominant emotions. Some facile sympathy is shown in his nostalgia for sentimental love and his appreciation of pop music. The character also has a wicked sense of humour, and shows an ironic, sometimes determined, awareness of the misery and futility of his life. By the end of the novel, even the thought of killing fails to arouse any feeling in him, and the final image is of a sign in a bar, declaring, This Is Not An Exit.

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Bateman's personality

On the surface, Bateman exemplifies the image of the successful Manhattan executive. He is well-educated, wealthy, belongs to a prominent family, has a high-paying job, lives in a chic upscale apartment complex, is unusually popular with women, and keeps up with cultural trends. In sum, Bateman passes for a refined, intelligent, and thoughtful young man. But this public persona is sharply contrasted with his alter ego: in addition to murder, he tortures his victims, engages in violent sex, and commits acts of cannibalism and necrophilia.

Bateman is extremely style-conscious and appears to be an expert in matters of fashion and high-end consumer products. He frequently goes into exhaustive detail describing his and other people's possessions, even including trivial articles such as ink pens, socks, and pocket squares. He often describes his own wardrobe and accessories, including the material of which they are made, the name of the designer, and the store from which they were purchased. In the course of the novel Bateman answers trivial queries with incisive authority, advising his friends on coworkers on subjects such as the difference between various types of mineral water, the proper way to wear a cummerbund, pocket square, or tie bar, which tie knot is less bulky than a Windsor knot, and other trivialities.

Bateman loathes male homosexuality and rejects any advance (real or imagined) by "faggots." He is especially offended by Luis Carruthers, who confesses his love for him but who ends up marrying a woman out of a combination of convenience and peer pressure. On two separate occasions he coerces two women into having sex with one another, torturing or killing them afterwards; lesbianism appears to be one of Bateman's recurring fantasies.

Another of Bateman's inconsistencies is in his lifestyle and attitude to health. On the one hand, he is health conscious - a militant non-smoker (except for an occasional cigar) who works out - while, on the other hand, he consumes large amounts of alcohol and drugs. This inconsistency is shared by other characters in the novel. Bateman's vanity is paramount, rather than a genuine care for health and well-being: obesity and tobacco-stink excite disgust, while cocaine abuse leaves few physical tell-tale signs. The focus of much of the narrative is on Bateman's attempts to "score" cocaine, and yet he is judgmental of his brother's use of the drug, and of several other freebasers.

Bateman is a music fan: he disdains rap music as too "niggerish," but otherwise closely follows the pop and rock scene of his time. Some chapters are exclusively dedicated to analysis of the careers of pop groups and singers such as Genesis, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and The News. Throughout the book, he insists his favorite band is Talking Heads, which released a song entitled "Psycho Killer" - although it is not obvious that Bateman is aware of this.

Bateman's job is a sinecure, and he feels no need to apply himself to his work, because of the influence and wealth of his family. However, his envy of his peers, both in their business successes and the colossal fortunes of their families, runs throughout the novel. Within his own compass, Bateman is supreme, usually turning up to work late - sometimes by more than an hour - and indulging in long lunches. While in the office, he appears to spend much of his time pursuing trivial amusements, such as listening to music, watching television, scribbling on notepads, or completing crossword puzzles. At one point he states that while he has no financial need to work, he prefers to hold a job simply to "fit in."

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Themes and Symbolism

American Psycho contains many elements of unreality, and it is difficult to discern which are conceits used by the author and which may only be fantasies inside Bateman's mind. How to reconcile the manner in which the novel freely mixes reality and fantasy is left up to the reader, and is a hot topic among fans.

One question that has often been asked by readers is why Bateman is never caught, let alone convicted, despite the attentions of a well-dressed detective. It is never made clear why the police fail to track Bateman down - they are perhaps incompetent, or careless, or just too busy due to the soaring crime rate in New York City.

As it turns out, Bateman fails to attract official suspicion, despite the casual manner in which he disposes of the bodies of his victims. He keeps the videos of the killings he has taped right in his apartment, and repeatedly and comically confesses his crimes to bored acquaintances, casually blurting out statements such as, "I'm a fucking evil psychopath", and that he likes to dissect girls. But no one appears to be listening or to take him seriously.

Bateman attends a Halloween party at his place of work "disguised" as a mass murderer, wearing a suit covered with real blood and, in his buttonhole, the finger bone from one of his victims. His maid regularly cleans up the mess in his apartment without asking any questions, and his Chinese dry cleaners clean his blood-stained clothes without suspecting anything. Even the women with whom Bateman associates most closely fail to become suspicious.

At the end of the novel, the reader is left to wonder if the narrator has imagined most, if not all, of his murderous acts. This sense is backed up by the over-the-top and seemingly impossible nature of several of the killings, and by the ambiguous reactions of several characters to the situations set up in Bateman's narrative. For example, he often describes his victims alive and in agony after he has violently assaulted them in ways which should kill them, such as when he claims that Paul Owen takes five minutes to die even after a series of blows with an axe has forced his brain through a wound in his face.

Following one episode, in which he has committed a bloody murder in his apartment, Bateman's maid comes in to do the cleaning and registers nothing out of the normal. In one chapter, in which he behaves outrageously at a restaurant before luring his ex-girlfriend to his apartment and killing her, the phrase "but since I'm really dreaming all this" is inserted casually into a sentence. During the outlandish "chase scene" in which Bateman escapes after murdering several people and engaging in a public shootout with the police, the narration of the action switches back and forth between the first and third person. Bateman also frequently points out, in the aftermath of his killings, that his victims' bodies have injuries which he does not remember inflicting. On the odd occasion, Bateman describes events which are necessarily either products of delusion or outright fantasy, such as his claims that a park bench followed him for several blocks, talking to him.

A conversation between Bateman and another character, Harold Carnes, at the book's closure is considered by some to be firm evidence that Bateman is imagining his crimes. Carnes ridicules Bateman's confession to the killing of the character Paul Owen, claiming to have dined twice with Owen in London. However, this may well be another of the many instances of mistaken identity within the novel, given the fact that Carnes fails to recognize Bateman himself, addressing him by two incorrect names within the space of one conversation. In addition, at one point Bateman is captured by a cab driver who seems to Bateman to have recognised him as the murderer of a fellow cabbie, although the driver merely robs Bateman by way of retribution.

The contradiction in Bateman's life - between the life he boasts of and the life implied by his observation of his surroundings - is realised in the way he is perceived by his friends and associates. Publicly, he expresses concern for the well-being of the less fortunate and disapproval of materialism, violent crime, economic disparity, and racial discrimination. Many women find him charming, while he is ridiculed by his colleagues as a "goody-goody" and nicknamed "The Boy Next Door." But his ability to maintain (or chafe beneath) this image within his social circle, while secretly seeing himself as a depraved serial killer who also holds strong racist and classist views, is the essence of the character.

Another recurring irony in American Psycho is that, despite the time, money, and effort the characters expend to enhance their personal appearance and stand out amongst their colleagues, they often resemble each other, and are mistaken for other people. Bateman himself is often referred to by other names throughout most or all of a conversation: Paul Owen repeatedly mistakes Bateman for a fellow colleague, Marcus Halberstam, even while Bateman takes him out to dinner, brings him back to Owen's own apartment, and murders him.

Several leitmotifs are present in both the novel and the film. First, there is the recurring reference to a Broadway production of Les Misérables. The title of this musical lends itself to a comparison with the Wall Street yuppies depicted in the novel who, it might be argued, are the real miserable ones. Second, there is Bateman's urge to "return some video-tapes" — an excuse he frequently uses when asked by jealous young women what he was doing last night or what he is going to do tonight. In the novel this phrase is used as a euphemism for what he really does mostly at night: torturing and killing people.

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Trivia

  • Real-life Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo was a huge fan of the novel. A copy of the book was found in the bedroom of the home in St. Catharines that he shared with his wife, Karla Homolka. Controversy was generated over whether Mr. Bernardo committed his crimes in response to his fascination with the book's events. However, the book's main character, Patrick Bateman, operated on his own, whereas Mr. Bernardo's wife played an active role in helping him commit his real-life crimes.
  • The book was originally to be published by Simon & Schuster in March of 1991, but the company decided to back off the project due to the novel's content. Vintage Books ended up buying the rights to the novel, and published an edited version of Easton's original manuscript. Some say the book was not changed all that much, while others have contended that the version that is in circulation today is significantly toned down from Easton's original piece.
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ISBN numbers

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See also

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External links

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