What’s in it for me? Uncover the deeper meaning behind a controversial classic.
Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho is one of those books you either love or hate. But no matter how you feel about it, it’s hard to deny its status as a cult classic.
Set during the Wall Street boom of the 1980s, American Psycho follows the life of Patrick Bateman – callous investment banker by day, deranged psycho killer by night.
The book describes Bateman’s exploits in such graphic detail that it barely made it to publication. Even before it finally found a publisher, critics griped about its gruesome descriptions of sex, drugs, and violence. But proponents hailed it as a transgressive critique of capitalist individualism and consumer culture.
In this Blink, we’ll break down the plot and symbolism of this controversial classic, and let you decide for yourself.
Before we begin, here’s a warning: This Blink contains references to violence, pornography, and drug use.
The Cruel Cosmos of Wall Street Yuppies
American Psycho begins with an allusion to another, much older work – Dante’s Inferno. In the Italian writer’s epic poem, the gates of Hell are inscribed with the phrase, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” In the opening scene of American Psycho, this phrase appears as graffiti scrawled along the side of a bank.
It’s a fair warning to us as we enter the world of young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman is in his mid-twenties and works at a Wall Street company called Pierce & Pierce. He’s handsome, successful, and incredibly jaded. His life is an endless montage of working out, fancy dinners, and sexual flings.
In the opening scene, Bateman is in a cab on the way to dinner at his girlfriend's house. Next to him, his colleague Tim Price is rambling about his great qualities while casually disparaging women, homeless and gay people, and their immigrant cab driver.
Bateman’s girlfriend, Evelyn, who also works in finance, has prepared expensive sushi for the evening. Bateman suspects that she’s having an affair with Tim. But he’s more bothered by the young, unkempt artist pair Evelyn has invited. The evening culminates with Bateman giving a standard conservative speech on how to fix America: strengthening the middle class, preventing welfare abuse, and – ironically – curbing graphic depictions of sex and violence on TV.
In the next chapters, we learn more about Bateman’s day-to-day life. He lives in a chic apartment on the Upper West Side, where he likes to listen to music and watch movies. He has a disciplined workout schedule and a multiple-step skincare routine.
Almost every night, he hangs out with his finance friends. They go to a bar called Harry’s, expensive restaurants, and nightclubs. They drink, smoke cigars, and do coke. Their topics of conversation never change. They consult Bateman on questions of business fashion; make jokes about homeless, Jewish, gay, and Black people; and comment crudely on attractive women, whom they call “hardbodies.”
Bateman appears to be both fully invested in and deeply bored with his yuppie lifestyle. In one iconic dinner scene, he tries to impress his colleagues with his new bone-colored business card – only to find himself in deep distress at realizing his colleagues’ business cards are even classier.
ANALYSIS
The first chapters of the novel introduce us to the world of Patrick Bateman. It’s a world of Wall Street yuppies – ruled by money, consumption, and superficiality.
Bateman’s first-person narration gives us insight into his system of values. He’s as obsessed with material possessions as with his own appearance. His great American idol is Donald Trump. And he can conceive of others – women in particular – only as objects for his own entertainment.
But disturbingly, all these traits are all shared by the people around him. Bateman’s colleagues appear just as cruel as he is – routinely offering sexist, racist, and classist observations. One of them casually talks about “blowing someone’s head off.”
Author Bret Easton Ellis is setting the stage: The transition between verbal and physical violence will be seamless.
Bateman also reveals himself to be an unreliable narrator. He frequently confuses his finance buddies for one another (and is in turn frequently mistaken by them). And we get first hints at his murderous inclinations through occasional offhand remarks. For instance, he mentions a serrated knife in his pocket, and masturbating to a movie scene in which a woman is murdered.
The Stupor of Mass Consumption
In a foreboding scene, Bateman is at the dry cleaners, complaining about a bloody shirt that has been returned to him not completely cleaned. The Chinese woman at the counter barely understands him, which catapults him into a fit of rage.
Later, Bateman is back at Harry’s with his colleagues. They all discuss how there are no pretty women with good personalities. One of them explains that he likes to taunt homeless people by holding out a dollar, then snatching it away at the last second.
As the novel progresses, scenes like these repeat themselves in slight variation. Bateman goes to dinner with colleagues, to a club, or on dates. He goes to the gym, gets a facial, or browses at the video store. Very rarely do we catch him at his office. There, he seems to do little more than drink and critique the outfits worn by his secretary, Jean – who he’s convinced is in love with him.
Above all, Bateman is constantly consuming. There’s substances: alcohol, prescription drugs, cocaine, and cigars. There’s media: horror movies like Body Double, trashy talk TV like the fictional Patty Winters Show, and obscenely titled porn. And finally, there’s music, which he listens to on his home stereo or his Walkman. The story is interrupted three times with Bateman’s lengthy analyses of the discographies of Genesis, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News.
Bateman also consumes women. His relationship with Evelyn is largely sexless, so he frequently goes on dates with mistresses. He treats them with utter disrespect. For example, he shamelessly lies to one of them about having reservations at a fancy restaurant called Dorsia. He’s also dating Courtney, the fiancée of his much-abhorred colleague Luis Carruthers.
After a party where Courtney tells him Luis might be on to them, he approaches a homeless man on the street. He offers him help at first, but then starts berating him – telling him that he has a “bad attitude.” Finally, he pulls out a knife and brutally stabs the man, then breaks his dog’s legs and walks away.
Later in the book, a college student stops Bateman in the street and asks him to name the saddest song he knows. Bateman names “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones.
ANALYSIS
Consumerism is one of the big themes in American Psycho. The book is littered with references to luxury brands, mass media, and pop culture. For instance, Bateman constantly gives detailed descriptions of the brands of clothes people are wearing – Gucci, Brooks Brothers, Oliver Peoples – and endlessly talks about the expensive tech he owns – from state-of-the-art Bowers & Wilkins speakers to a Toshiba VCR. In one telling scene, he’s literally drooling over a red Lamborghini.
It’s a comment on the mindless overconsumption that defines capitalist American culture, and Bateman’s yuppie bubble in particular. Bateman asserts his class status through his expensive taste, but also uses a constant stream of media to numb himself. As a consequence, violence has become just another avenue of entertainment for him.
But not even that evokes any real pleasure in him anymore. After he stabs the homeless man, he reports immediately feeling bored and tired. He’s in a state some philosophers have called “depressive hedonia” – the overstimulation that defines his life of excess leaves him deeply understimulated.
Everyone Talks but No One Listens
One of the great puzzles at the heart of American Psycho is that Bateman frequently shares his murder fantasies with people around him. Sometimes he even outright admits to his crimes in front of others.
Yet no one seems to listen or care.
During his facial, he tells his cosmetologist Helga about his perverted fantasies regarding blood transfusions, but she’s too busy cleaning his pores to hear him. At lunch, he tells a Price & Price colleague that he likes to murder people, but the colleague keeps droning on about the Japanese takeover of the US. Over dinner, he tells Evelyn about two black children he killed, but she’s distracted by a woman she mistakes for Ivana Trump. Instead of processing what he says, Evelyn fantasizes about getting married – a notion that Bateman resists vehemently.
Their relationship in particular seems like a hollow performance that has little to do with mutual understanding. In a rare moment of romantic adventure, Bateman convinces Evelyn to skip her own Christmas party to go to a club, but Evelyn keeps worrying about the quality of the Waldorf salad she served. And at the club, Bateman gets in a fight with another couple, which leads Evelyn to storm off.
Meanwhile, Bateman’s exploits are growing more frequent and more violent. After observing a Pride parade, he tortures a small dog to death. And over the supposed threat of Japanese investors, he kills an Asian delivery boy.
He also tries to murder his colleague Luis Carruthers in a club bathroom. Unfortunately, Luis mistakes the strangulation attempt for a come-on, and starts kissing Bateman’s hand. Horrified, Bateman flees the scene. He takes revenge later that night by brutally killing a gay man and his dog. He then picks up a sex worker and an escort, makes them have sex with each other, and abuses them with a coat hanger.
Finally, he takes revenge on his work rival Paul Owens. After a dinner at which Bateman tells Paul that he likes to “dissect girls,” he takes Paul back home to his apartment. Paul notices too late that the floor is already covered with old newspapers. Bateman, wearing a see-through raincoat, lunges at him with an ax. After the murder, Bateman takes Paul’s keys and goes to his apartment, where he rerecords the message on Paul’s answering machine.
But there’s also a rare moment in which Bateman shows pity. After taking home a model from a club, he suddenly instructs her to leave because he’s afraid he will hurt her. His mercy, however, is just as arbitrary as his violence.
ANALYSIS
The fact that the people around him frequently ignore Bateman’s violent confessions is a potent satire of the superficiality of his surroundings. There’s constant conversation throughout the book – about fashion, dinner reservations, and different brands of bottled water, for instance – but no one is really saying much, let alone listening to each other.
Their absent-mindedness is both cause and symptom of a lifestyle that offers no deep meaning or real connection. Evelyn is a prime example of this. She routinely overhears or misinterprets what Bateman is saying, and is completely wrapped up in her own agenda of status and marriage. At one dinner, Bateman even attempts to break up with her, but Evelyn tells him that they should just “avoid the issue.”
And Bateman is guilty of not listening, too. He constantly zones out when other people talk to him. He’s always distracted, thinking about his last or his next murder, pondering life, or humming songs – such as Mick Jagger’s “Just Another Night.”
Breaking from Reality
Between all the assaults and murders, Bateman begins having serious psychotic breaks. He stumbles aimlessly through the city, drugged out, sweat-drenched, and delirious. These episodes are marked by chapters that start and end mid-sentence.
Bateman spends most of the summer in this state of stupor. His mask of sanity is slipping, and his murderous instincts are out of control.
He meets up with an old girlfriend, Bethany, and is uncharacteristically nervous during their date. When she tells him that she’s dating the chef of Dorsia, he gets extremely upset. After the meal, he convinces Bethany to come up to his apartment, where he assaults her with a nail gun. He tortures her all night before she finally dies.
A little later, a detective visits Bateman at the office and inquires about Paul Owen. Bateman is able to shake him off with relative ease. He tells him that Paul was a “Yale” type of guy – which is supposed to mean that he was gay and did lots of drugs.
Bateman’s attempted murder of Luis also has consequences. He runs into Luis twice afterwards. Both times, Luis confesses his love for him. Bateman furiously shakes him off.
In what may be an attempt to reclaim his sanity, Bateman invites his secretary Jean out for dinner. After they get kicked out of Dorsia for taking someone else’s reservation, Jean invites Bateman up to her apartment. But Bateman feels a tingle of actual romantic feeling that scares him, and he declines.
Bateman also spends some time in the Hamptons with Evelyn, during which he tries to improve his mental health. He ends up eating sand, microwaving a jellyfish, and killing the puppy he had just bought her.
By this time, Bateman hardly shows up at work anymore. He invites Christie, the sex worker he had previously assaulted, and Elizabeth, another acquaintance, over to his place. Again, he makes the girls have sex, but this time, he murders them both. He then stabs a small child at a zoo, maims two more girls in his apartment, and uses a rat to torture a third one to death.
When he tries to make meatloaf out of one of his victims, he suddenly finds that he can’t stop crying. He dissociates and sobs about how he just wants to be loved, and how “these are terrible times.”
ANALYSIS
Toward the end of the book, Bateman’s bloodlust spirals out of control. He’s in deep, existential pain that no amount of sex, violence, or drugs can appease. Paradoxically, as his murders and methods of torture get more extreme, he also seems to be growing more self-aware.
He feels himself turning into something increasingly inhuman, but he’s also showing some rare insight and emotion. For instance, he finds himself overwhelmed by the shallowness of his life, and curses the “principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises” that define it.
Thoughts like these offer some of the most straightforward indictments of the greed, alienation, and violence that capitalist culture begets. Despite the increasingly disturbing murders, we get a glimpse of Bateman as a broken man – a victim of circumstance – who’s simply looking for a way out of his pain.
Bateman’s Eternal Punishment
By November, Bateman’s flat reeks of decay. He has more and more breaks from reality, and now sometimes talks about himself in the third person.
One night, he shoots a young saxophone player in the street, and the police start chasing him. He ends up in a full-blown shoot-out with them.
Improbably, one of his bullets hits the gas tank of the police car, and it explodes. Bateman flees back to his apartment. He calls a random colleague, Harold Carnes, and leaves a message on Carnes’s answering machine. He confesses to everything – 50 to a 100 murders, by his own estimate – and ends with the admission that he’s “a pretty sick guy.”
But somehow, the retribution won’t come. In the following days, Bateman is in bed again with Courtney. He’s on a date with his new mistress. He’s out at a bar with his boys. He even visits his mother, who is in hospital. Heavily sedated, she tells him that he looks unhappy.
By now, Bateman is literally begging to be found out. He begins asking colleagues if any corpses have been found at Paul Owen’s apartment. When he visits the apartment one last time, he finds it completely cleaned out. He runs into a real estate agent holding a viewing of the place, who tells him to not make any trouble.
Bateman finally confronts Harold Carnes at a club, asking what he thought of the message Bateman left him. Carnes says he found it “hilarious.” Bateman tries to convince him once more that he really is a serial killer, but Harold refuses to believe him.
Bateman is as psychotic as ever. He sees messages on ATMs, telling him to feed them stray cats.
One day, Bateman gets in a cab. The cab driver insists that he knows him, and finally reveals that he saw him on a wanted poster downtown. He then pulls out a gun and strips Bateman of his watch and wallet. As he throws him out of the car and calls him a “yuppie scumbag.”
In the final scene, Bateman is back at Harry’s. As usual, the boys are asking for his fashion advice. But Bateman is distracted and confused. The final moment of the book highlights a sign over a door at the bar. It says, “This is not an exit.”
ANALYSIS
By the end of the book, Bateman has descended so deeply into madness that he wishes nothing more than to be set free from it. But his confessions once more fall on deaf ears.
Bateman’s punishment is that he has to keep living the life he’s made for himself – a life of greed, superficial pleasures, and casual violence. His run-in with the cab driver poses the question outright: Is his life really so much better than the life of the lower-class people he despises?
The sign at the end of the book – “This is not an exit” – reminds us of the graffiti from Dante at the beginning. Bateman is in Hell, and there’s no way out.