American Psycho

“Suddenly the restaurant seems far away, hushed, the noise distant, a meaningless hum, compared to this card.”

Bateman tries to impress his colleagues with his expensive new business cards. Yet Price, whose card is even better, outdoes him. This provokes an intense jealousy and rage in Bateman, reflecting his obsession with masculine competition.

“I can’t help noticing that one knee is, admittedly, bigger than the other one.”

Bateman sees an attractive woman in the club they visit. However, Price points out her legs. Bateman notices a minor flaw in her appearance and loses all interest in her. This demonstrates the extremely vapid and objectifying way Patrick and his colleagues have come to view women.

“He starts giggling, low at first but it builds to a high-pitched crescendo of laughter which is abruptly cut off when he slams down the receiver.”

Patrick claims the maitre d’ laughs at him when trying to get a reservation for himself and Courtney at the exclusive restaurant, Dorsia. It is not clear that this was in fact the real reaction from the maitre d’. Rather it more likely reflects Bateman’s frustration and humiliation at being unable to secure a table.

“I’m telling you I recommend the Diet Pepsi.”

At a restaurant, a female acquaintance tries to order a rum and Diet Coke. This leads Bateman to give her a lecture on the superiority of Diet Pepsi over Coke for mixing with rum. The level of passion with which Patrick does this demonstrates his obsession with arbitrary brand distinctions and the extent to which his worldview has been warped by consumerism.

“There are too many f*****g movies to choose from.”

Patrick is in a video rental store trying to find a film. He reflects on how the abundance of choice makes this impossible. This can be understood as a reflection of Bateman’s anxiety about authenticity and identity. It is also a comment on the vacuity of mass culture.

“I keep studying her face, bored by how beautiful it is, flawless really.”

Bateman is observing Evelyn on their date, where she is trying to convince him to marry her. Her physical perfection, common to other women in his social circle, holds no interest for him. On one level he wants the distinctiveness and individuality that can only come with some level of imperfection. 

“You’ve got a negative attitude. That’s what’s stopping you.”

Patrick says this to a homeless man. It showcases his lack of empathy. It also shows his acceptance of the neo-liberal ideology of the time, which held that wealth and poverty were purely the result of individual choices. Similarly, Easton Ellis satirizes the self-help culture prevalent in the US which, relatedly, claimed that all forms of success could be attained simply by having the correct, positive, attitude.

“It struck me that I was infinitely better-looking, more successful and richer than this poor bastard would ever be.”

Bateman says this about the new doorman in his apartment complex. Patrick sees this man as a weird, socially, and physically inferior doppelganger of himself. It is unclear if this reflects reality or expresses Bateman’s narcissism.

“I hate live music.”

Bateman is offered free tickets to a U2 concert and reflects on his dislike for live music. On one level this shows his commitment to the artificial and heavily produced music of the 1980s. It is also shows his desire for control. Music on a Walkman or stereo can be controlled whereas live music involves spontaneity and the unknown, over which he has no power.

“It’s just Bono onstage- the stadium’s deserted, the band fades away…”

Despite being resistant to seeing U2 at first, Patrick has something approaching a religious experience. Bono, the band’s lead singer, makes eye contact with him. Bateman feels this intense and deep connection with Bono and the music. However, this feeling quickly fades, and it is unclear whether this imagined moment of authentic connection was an illusion.

“It takes an awesome amount of strength to fight down the urge to start slapping myself in the face.”

Bateman thinks this as he prowls the streets looking for victims. This suggests that his narcissism and his desire to hurt others is intermingled with self-hatred. It may reflect a sense of guilt about his own sexual desires for other men, as this desire to hurt himself prefaces his murder of a gay man and his dog.

“Her head is within my reach, is mine to crush.”

Bateman has lured a sex worker, Christie, back to his apartment with money. His sexual desire for her, as with his desire for women throughout the novel, is premised on control and domination. He sees Christie as an object that he can use and inflict violence on.

“My voice sounds similar to Owen’s and to someone hearing it over the phone probably identical.”

After killing Paul Owen, Patrick breaks into his apartment to change his answering machine message and suggest that Owen had gone to London. However, it is unclear if the reader can take this story seriously. Would people really not be able to tell the difference between their voices? In light of the novel’s end, this story may be another hint that Owen’s murder took place only in Patrick’s imagination.

“Since it’s impossible in the world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathise with ourselves.”

Bateman’s summarizes one of the main meanings of Whitney Houston’s music. This is a glimpse into his narcissism and inability to empathize with others. It also shows how he is disassociating from his self, viewing himself as a third-person other.

“I began, talking to nobody.”

When Detective Kimball comes into Bateman’s office to ask about Owen, Bateman pretends to be on the phone with a colleague. He does this to show his importance and to intimidate Kimball. However, it really demonstrates his anxiety and shows how his identity as a stockbroker is a performance.

“We talked about only romantic things.”

Patrick and Evelyn go on holiday to the Hamptons to escape the city. At first it seems that they rekindle an authentic romantic connection. However, it becomes clear that talking about romantic things, sunsets, the stars, the moon, does not inspire genuine connection. They soon return to their usual, distanced, and dislocated relationship.

“The zoo seems empty, devoid of life. The polar bears look stained and drugged. A crocodile floats morosely in an oily makeshift pond.”

Depressed after his holiday with Evelyn, Bateman goes to the Central Park Zoo. The animals, like him, are trapped in a grubby, artificial world. He sees a snowy owl that apparently has eyes like his. This inspires him to murder a child to avenge himself on human beings.

“Sex happens—a hardcore montage.”

After luring two sex workers to his apartment, Bateman has sex with them. He imagines and engages in sex on the model of pornography. He wants to be a director and observer as much as a participant and treats the women as mere vessels. 

“I’m kneeling on the floor beside a corpse, eating the girl’s brain, gobbling it down, spreading Grey Poupon over the hunks of the pink, fleshy meat.”

The breakdown of Bateman’s world is gaining momentum. Initially a connoisseur of fine foods and restaurants, Bateman is now eating the brains of a dead victim, on the floor, in his gore-spattered apartment. This image is a metaphor for the way consumerism and capitalism devour human beings.

“There has been no word of bodies discovered in any of the city’s four newspapers or on the local news.”

Bateman reflects that there has been no mention of the murdered and mutilated bodies for which he is supposedly responsible. This leads the reader to question whether these murders, and that of Owen, took place or are Bateman’s fantasies. The estate agent selling what Bateman imagines to be Owen’s apartment has no awareness of who Paul Owen is.

“All frontiers, if there had ever been any, seem suddenly detached, and have been removed, a feeling that others are creating my fate will not leave me for the rest of the day.”

The estate agent confronts Bateman at what he believed was Owen’s flat. Bateman is faced with the dreadful feeling that his sense of reality is falling apart. The boundaries between fantasy and reality, illusion, and truth are blurring. 

“All summer long Madonna cries out to us, ‘life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone.’”

On the one hand this seems to comment on the popularity of a Madonna song in the late 80s. For Bateman though these lyrics capture something about the disintegration, incomprehensibility, and isolation of his world. It also captures how this song, like many aspects of life, becomes empty and cliché through repetition.

“My automated teller has started speaking to me, sometimes actually leaving weird messages on the screen.”

Here the reader sees Bateman’s low point—the conclusion of his downward character arc. His warped and distorted sense of reality has given way to hallucination and delusion. The novel treats Bateman’s psychosis symbolically: As the psychosis breaks him off from reality, it represents his alienation from the world.