American Psycho

:This article is about the book and film. For the album by The Misfits, see American Psycho (album).

The novel

Plot

American Psycho is set in the late 1980s, mainly in Manhattan. The novel describes roughly two years of the life of Patrick Bateman, the first person narrator. Bateman, 26 years old at the beginning of the story, may or may not be a serial killer and cannibal. Coming from a rich WASP background, Bateman has studied at Harvard (he is one of the class of '84) and has turned into a seemingly prototypical yuppie. He works as a Wall Street banker at the firm of Pierce & Pierce.

Related Topics:
1980s - Manhattan - Patrick Bateman - First person narrator - Cannibal - WASP - Harvard - Yuppie - Wall Street

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In the novel, Bateman describes how he kills and tortures several people:

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• beautiful young women ("hardbodies"), never older than Bateman himself, whom he "punishes" for being what they are: either friends or former friends of his. Examples are his ex-girlfriend Bethany, prostitutes, and escort girls.
• business rivals (in particular a man called Paul Owen, whom he kills in his own apartment);
• the poor, homeless and unemployed he stumbles across in the streets of Manhattan, generally people to whom he refers 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 a Japanese);
• innocent people he comes across in the street (including a boy he stabs at the zoo in Central Park, a gay man with a dog, and a saxophonist);
• people he shoots at one point in the novel where he is being chased by the police (a taxi driver, a policeman, a night watchman, and a janitor).
• Bateman also tortures and kills animals such as dogs or rats.

The sadistic pleasure Bateman takes in murder, and the homicidal rage that motivates them, is the only form of emotion Bateman is capable of. By the end of the novel, even killing can't arouse any feeling in him; he is left completely hollow.

Related Topics:
Sadistic - Emotion

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Left ambiguous, seemingly deliberately, is what happens to the mutilated bodies of two escort girls which Bateman leaves in Paul Owen's apartment. When he attempts to let himself into the dead man's apartment again he encounters a real estate agent and a young couple, her clients, in Owen's apartment. Furnishings are intact, and there is no trace of prior mayhem. On asking the real estate agent what is going on, Bateman is told not to make any trouble and to leave again. While likely a plot turn that signals Bateman's departure from sanity, the author's omission of an explanation leaves open the possibility that all of Bateman's crimes and killings were not real, but rather illusions or delusions that Bateman has manifested entirely in his mind. (Alternately -- and in keeping with the book's running theme of Bateman's gory messes being cleaned up without comment by maids and launderers -- it may simply be the case that Owen's swanky apartment was quietly and callously tidied up so that it could be put back on the market.)

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Bateman's personality

Some people think that Bateman has an antisocial personality disorder, because of the crimes he commits, and his apparent indifference to the suffering and death of his victims. Others think that Bateman is 'just' an extreme example of Kant's dictum that the world is highly cultivated and civilized but not yet moralized 1. Kant clearly sees that there is a dichotomy between culture and civilization on the one hand and morality on the other. In American Psycho, all the Wall Street people dress perfectly, eat only the best and most expensive food and keep their bodies in shape by working out in exclusive health clubs. In the course of the novel Bateman discusses things like which brand of bottled water is the best, how to wear a cummerbund, or which tie knot is less bulky than a Windsor. Bateman knows all the answers and could pass for a very refined and also intelligent and thoughtful young man. This, his "public persona", is sharply contrasted with his alter ego: Bateman not only drinks his own urine, he also bites off and swallows one of the nipples of a girl he is having sex with; he cuts out Bethany's tongue while she is still alive; he eats a girl's brain after he has slaughtered her; and he decapitates a woman, puts his erect penis into the mouth of her severed head and walks around the room with it, laughing.

Related Topics:
Antisocial personality disorder - Kant - Culture - Civilization - Morality - Cummerbund - Alter ego - Urine - Nipple - Decapitates - Penis

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Some people think that Bateman's view of himself exemplifies Jean Baudrillard's notion 2 that our whole lives are fake rather than real (see also: hyperreality). Whatever we do or feel, Baudrillard argues, we experience a simulation rather than the real thing. In the same vein, Bateman experiences at least major parts of his life as if he were watching a movie. Actually, Bateman uses a camcorder to film most of his deeds.

Related Topics:
Jean Baudrillard - Hyperreality - Camcorder

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Bateman is extremely anti-gay and abhors all advances (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.

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One of the inconsistencies in Bateman's life is that he is, on the one hand, very health conscious. For example, he is a militant non-smoker and works out fanatically. On the other hand, he consumes large amounts of alcohol and drugs. This inconsistency is shared by other characters in the novel.

Related Topics:
Non-smoker - Alcohol

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Bateman is a music fan. He does not like rap music because for his taste it is too "niggerish", but otherwise he closely follows the pop and rock scene of his time. Some chapters are exclusively dedicated to analyses of the careers of pop groups and singers such as Genesis, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News. What is often missed by reviewers and critics of the book is that while the sections on the respective groups begin accurately, they veer away to wildly innaccurate statements by the end, thus mirroring the inaccurate pairings of groups with songs sprinkled liberally throughout the entire book.

Related Topics:
Rap music - Genesis - Whitney Houston - Huey Lewis and the News

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Opinions about the kind of society that is described in the novel

One question that has often been asked by readers is why Bateman is never caught, let alone convicted. As it turns out, he does not even become a suspect. Bateman never goes to great lengths when disposing of the bodies of the people he has killed. He also keeps the videos of the killings he has taped right in his apartment. According to some people, the author tries to show that people in contemporary postmodern society only care about themselves and their appearances. For example, the characters in the novel regularly address each other by the wrong name, showing that they don't care much about the person with whom they are speaking. In fact, Bateman repeatedly confesses his crimes to other people, but they do not appear to listen, or they don't take him seriously. He even goes to a Halloween party at his place of work "disguised" as a mass murderer, with his suit covered with real blood and himself wearing a real finger bone, cooked, in his buttonhole. Bateman's maid regularly cleans up the mess in his apartment without asking any questions. His Chinese dry cleaners clean his blood-stained clothes without suspecting anything. Even the women Bateman associates with most closely or for a longer period of time do not become suspicious of his personality. It is not explained why the police fail to track Bateman down.

Related Topics:
Convicted - Postmodern - Halloween

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Bateman's constant evasion of justice could be seen as a reflection of the fantasy most people (but especially serial killers) have of "getting away with murder." The novel's play on this fantasy could partly account for its continuing popularity. It should be noted that at one point he is captured by a cab driver who recognises Bateman as the murderer of a fellow cabbie, but this character resorts to robbery as compensation only.

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Bateman also embodies the man who has everything. A successful man who has everything, can only be truly happy when he is taking advantage of another person and ultimately killing them, the ultimate power trip.

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Symbolism

Several leitmotifs have been pointed out. Firstly, 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. Secondly, 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.

Related Topics:
Leitmotif - Broadway - Les Misérables - Musical - Euphemism

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Relationship of the novel to other literature

Some people think that, in a way, American Psycho continues the tradition of the social novel. They think the book shows the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, although no serious solution is provided. The Wall Street yuppies in the novel firmly believe that "economic success equals happiness". They do not care about inequality, or about poor people.

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At one point in the novel Bateman says that "there are no more barriers to cross". According to some, this statement does not only apply to his own life. They think it also applies to the novel as an art form: everything has been done, and formerly controversial subjects areas such as crime and sex have been exhausted.

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The novel has also been linked with Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground; American Psycho starts out with a long quotation from this book as a motto. Some critics have also pointed out that the novels share some themes, and that Patrick Bateman shares some distinctive qualities with the unnamed narrator of the Notes. For example, both books deal with suffering and the enjoyment of suffering, and both narrators have a 'desire' for (seeing) pain and paranoia.

Related Topics:
Notes from Underground - Motto

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