PATRICK BATEMAN
PUBLIC LIFE
white male, 26
Investment Banker, Pierce &
Pierce, unnecessary employment
Extremely wealthy
Child of divorce
Attractive (charming, physically)
Well-educated, very attentive to
detail, informed, expert in high-end
products and fashion, hyper-sensitive
to projected style and aesthetics
“boy next door”
Successful with women
Anti-racist, humanist, socially
conscious
Drug addict, but hates smokers
PATRICK BATEMAN
PRIVATE LIFE
Misogynist, racist, sexist,
classist, judgemental
Hyper self-conscious
 attaches disproportionate value
to social symbols of success (i.e.
restaurants, clothing)
Obsessed with Patty Winters
Obsessed with violent and
pornographic films
Scopophilia
Homophobic but homosocial
Actively plans ways to torture
and kill women
Considers himself a type of
“god” in that he decides who he
will and will not kill
Conscious that his activities are
“wrong”, sometimes convinces
himself of nihilism in order to
continue
CHARACTER SUMMARIES
Major Characters:
Evelyn Williams- Patrick's girlfriend/casual fiancé.
Timothy Price- Patrick’s best friend and colleague.
Paul Owen- Patrick's colleague.
Jean- Patrick's secretary (who is also in love with him).
Luis Carruthers- Patrick’s co-worker at Pierce & Pierce
who is in love with Patrick (homosexual).
Courtney Lawrence - Luis's girlfriend who is having an
affair with Patrick.
Craig McDermott- Patrick’s colleague, part of a main
social foursome (Bateman, Timothy Price and David
Van Patten).
David Van Patten - Patrick's colleague, also part of
Bateman's main social group.
Minor characters
Christie- A prostitute, and abused sexually on several
occasions by Patrick.
Marcus Halberstam- Patrick's colleague; Paul Owen
constantly mistakes Patrick for Marcus.
Donald Kimball- A private detective hired to investigate
Paul Owens’s disappearance and death.
Sean Bateman- Patrick’s younger brother.
PLOT SUMMARY
“a violently boring as well as boringly violent text” – Marco Abel
• set in Manhattan
• begins on April Fool’s Day and spans approx. 2
years of Patrick Bateman’s life
• descriptions of his time at work, complicated
social interactions, health and beauty routines
and personal daily activities, opinions on music
and fashion, sex life, his preparations for rapes
and murders and the actual violent acts themselves
• follows no coherent time line; a series of events
which loosely illustrate Bateman’s psychological
deterioration
•first 3rd of the book shows no violent passages; sets
up Bateman’s “public” life and establishes the
importance of wealth and image via fashion,
restaurants, sex; mostly “yuppie” culture dialogue
(fashion etiquette, drugs, girls)
• however there is some foreshadowing of
Bateman’s homicidal tendencies; in the second 3rd
of the book we see the violent side of Pat Bateman
• Bateman describes his gruesome murders with the
same incessant detail used earlier to describe his
material world, opinions on pop culture and social
activities
PLOT SUMMARY
•the last 3rd conveys a sense that Bateman’s
violent outbursts can no longer be
controlled and the murders get more
sadistic, complex and grotesque
• Bateman loses control of his narrative,
which becomes more fragmented and
nonsensical; he also becomes more
philosophical and comments on the
“meaning” of his violent behavior
• we see Bateman also talking openly
about his mass murders more frequently
towards the last third of the book, but there
is either no reaction or he is thought to be
joking; his murders seems to go
unpunished and unnoticed for the most
part.
PLOT SUMMARY
• there are some references to Bateman recognizing
he is harmful
• towards the end of the book, Bateman’s violent
tendencies take over his thoughts and life, as his
appearances to the office decrease, (stable outlets
such as the gym and the Patty Winters show ground
him in this time)
• Bateman describes strange occurrences that are
too far-fetched to be true (e.g. the ATM tells him to
feed it a kitten)
• at the peak of his deterioration, Bateman has an
emotional breakdown in his office where he calls
his lawyer and leaves him a message confessing his
murders and violent acts, including that of Paul
Owen; the lawyer does not address Bateman initially,
and does not believe that he has committed the
crimes that were confessed and provides proof
contradicting that he did
PLOT SUMMARY
• thus the question is raised whether any
of these murders actually took place
• whether any of the crimes committed in
the book actually happened is left up to
the reader to decide: Is Pat Bateman a
serial killer, or a delusional psychotic?
• the novel ends with Pat Bateman
carrying a conversation with his “yuppie”
social group about everyday nonsense, as
it had began
• the last line of the book “This is not an
exit” ties in with the first sentence of
the novel “Abandon all hope ye who
enter here”; this suggests both that
Bateman has no escape from his
psychological state, and also that the end
of the book will not provide relief for the
reader
LITERARY ANALYSIS
Style/Naturalist/Surrealist/Absurd/Satire/Black Comedy
Psychonarration, Commentary
Free association/Boredom/Stream of consciousness
Overt narrator/ is there any narrative distance?
Present Tense? Recollection? (slice-of-life), Tellability
Telling – narrator is in overt control, Paralepsis/Ego
Power (Mortality, Class, Utility, Structure)
Who is the/Is there an antagonist? Foil characters
Anticlimactic? (Lack of) Catharsis?
Realistic fiction? Apocalyptic/Speculative fiction?
Information-Giving vs. Storytelling
Concise (?) and reader-conscious expository
information (block characterization)
Implied author (overarching intratextual authority)?
Implied audience?
Any sort of reader identification (of self or of desires)?
NARRATOR RELIABILITY
Evidence refuting Bateman as a reliable narrator:
Bateman is explicitly aware of a reader audience.
 answers implied questions, provides his reader
with advice and addresses his audience directly,
almost conversationally:
Evelyn is an executive at a financial services
company, FYI. pg 13
Never use cologne on your face, since
the high alcohol content dries your
face out and makes you look older. pg 27
Yes my brain does explode and my
bursts open inwardly – a spastic,
gastric reaction…pg 239
stomach
acidic
Dinner last night? At Splash. Not much to
remember: a watery Bellini…Right now
I’m in the middle of purchasing a belt…
pg. 291
NARRATOR RELIABILITY
Bateman is concerned with projecting a particular
image to whatever audience he has.
 consciously defensive of his image and often lies
in order to support a vision of himself:
“Hi,” she says. “It’s me, Patricia.”
“Could you hold on? I’ve got another call.”
“Oh sure,” she says.
I put her on hold for two minutes, then get
back on the line.
Armstrong just got back from the islands
and has a very deep, very even tan, but so
do I. pg 137
“Listen,” I say, pushing my chair in. “I just
want everyone to know that I’m profamily and anti-drug.” pg. 157
NARRATOR RELIABILITY
Bateman omits certain events and details from his
narrative.
 Narrative style is often disconnected, fragmented or
surreal, sometimes slips into third person:
Evelyn is talking but I’m not listening. Her
mouth is moving but I’m not hearing
anything and I can’t listen, I can’t really
concentrate, since my rabbit has been cut to
look…just…like…a…star!” pg 123
“Hip,” I murmur, remembering last night,
how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell’s –
my mouth foaming, all I could think about
were insects, lots of insects, and running at
pigeons. Pg 108
flames washing over the bodies of the
policemen both living and dead, shattering
all the windows of Lotus Blossom, Patrick’s
ears ringing… …while running toward
Wall Street, still in Tribeca, he stays away
from where the streetlamps shine the
brightest pg 350
NARRATOR RELIABILITY
Bateman includes details that support his image
but are highly unlikely or absurd.
Back at my apartment his body is already in
rigor mortis, and after wrapping it up in four
cheap-terry cloth towels I also bought at
Conran’s Memorial Day sale, I place Owen
headfirst and fully dressed into a Canalino
goose-down sleeping bag, which I zip up
and then drag easily into the elevator, then
through the lobby, past the night doorman,
down the block, where I briefly run into
Arthur Crystal and Kitty Martin…I hail a
taxi, effortlessly manage to swing the
sleeping bag into the backseat, hop in and
give the driver the address. pg 219
I quickly stand up, brushing myself off, and
when I think his outburst has subsided and
I’m able to walk away, Luis grabs at my a
ankle and tries to hang on as I’m leaving
Barney’s and I end up dragging him along
for six feet before I have to kick him in the
face. “I love you,” he miserably wails. “I
love you.” pg 296
REALITY VS. DREAM
Questions which exploring the
“reality” of Bateman’s rapes and
murders:
1. Is Paul Owen dead?
2. Did Patrick kill and store bodies in
Paul Owens’s apartment?
“I suggest you go,” she says.
We stand there in the hallway facing each
other.
“Don’t make any trouble,” she says
again, quietly.
I stand there a few seconds longer before
finally backing away, holding up my
hands, a gesture of assurance.
“Don’t come back,” she says.
“I won’t,” I say. “Don’t worry.” pg 370
REALITY VS. DREAM
3. Does the Taxi driver know that Patrick is
a murderer?
4. Are Patrick’s confessions to his lawyer
an illusion?
5. Did he really leave a message on
Harold’s answering machine? If he did
confess, why wasn’t he caught, and why
wasn’t the case looked into further?
I decide to make public what has been,
until now, my private dementia, but Harold
isn’t in, business, London, I leave a
message, admitting everything, leaving
nothing out, thirty, forty, a hundred
murders…sobbing though I don’t know
why, into Harold’s machine… pg 352
PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS
NISHA
When I first started reading the novel, I found myself
getting impatient through the beginning, and
anticipating to read the controversial violent scenes of
the text, the “good part” (or “bad part” depending on
how you look at it). After having a taste of the
gruesome description of the murders in the book, I felt
very scandalized and had to put the book down.
Having have to read this book from cover to cover for
the presentation, I can now appreciate certain aspects
of it. For starters, it is written in a quite readable style,
which I think is done intentionally to compensate for
the difficulty squeamish readers will have in reading
the more gruesome passages. This book also tended to
stay with me while I was reading it; I noticed I would
be thinking of it throughout the day which is a good
indication that Ellis managed to place the novel firmly
in the real world. Although this book did shock me,
disturb me, and quite frankly frighten me, it still did
manage to enlighten and educate me.
PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS
DANIELLA
This book took me a very long time to read. I
found that I needed to “recover” from the violent
scenes before I could move on – and honestly
that process usually took up to a week. Once I
managed to dull myself to the horrors Bateman
describes – by reading and rereading, a sort of
forced desensitization – I was able to look at the
book objectively. I agree with the many critics
who call it an “important book” and I also think
its construction is very purposeful. It’s not a book
I would have read in my personal life, since I
don’t think I would have been able to force
myself through the rape and murder scenes unless
I absolutely had to. But once you get past all that,
there really is an underlying hilarious irony that
keeps you from taking the text too seriously.
PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS
NEHREEN
Initially, in my opinion, “American Psycho” is a
very monotonous novel. When Patrick Bateman
begins torturing and murdering people, I started
to get anxious and uncomfortable with his
degrading nature and descriptions of
women. Overall, I was not comfortable reading
this book because even when I was not reading it,
I was still unconsciously thinking of the ways in
which he tortured people. On the other hand,
Ellis has made a point to make people aware of
the ghastly and horrific things people are capable
of doing in society.
READER EXPERIENCE
We experience the text in three ways:
PRIMARY ACTANT
first-person narrative
expertise
unnatural details
often present tense
HELPLESS BYSTANDER
unable to alter events
forced to keep reading
“allowing” or “condoning” by reading
irreconcilable sense of guilt (suspense)
TORTURED VICTIM
sympathy/empathy for victims
victim’s pain described emotionally
fear of this occurring in real world
fear of someday experiencing torture
READER EXPERIENCE
 is our sense of justice violated?
Crime and Punishment
kill without consequence
misogyny
 The problems with affective fallacy
our emotional response
objectively assessing the book
criticisms of book vs film
AUTHORIAL INTENT
 DEFAMILIARIZATION
in order to access us, Ellis needs to push
the boundaries of acceptability
desensitization
do we begin to subconsciously "crave"
the murder/rape sequences as a break
from the monotony of Bateman's life?
SPECULATIVE FICTION
cautionary tale?
self-involvement
misrepresentation
doublethink
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What was your experience reading the
excerpts?
2. Do you consider this novel
pornographic? If so, is it purposeful or
senseless pornography?
3. Do you think that Bateman’s murderous
activity existed only inside his mind?
Does this change your reading
experience?
4. Would you consider Ellis’ portrayal of
Manhattan and Bateman’s world satire,
or naturalism/realism?
5. What did you feel most scandalized by?
Rape, murder, torture, misogyny, racism,
greed, lack of justice…
6. Do you think that you should have to be
over 18 to purchase this novel?
7. Do you agree with the many critics who
cite this book as “important”?