Imagination Overload (American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis)

Member Name: Daniel_Nash

Product:	American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Date:	30/05/01 (97 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its gory, bloody , and so imaginative

Disadvantages: bit too graphic at some points

When i began to write this it turned out i need it for an essay, so it is a bit long winded. Sorry about that. I got good marks though!! Probably be locked, but least you can read it.



Patrick Bateman is twenty-six years old, he works on Wall Street at a firm called “Pierce and Pierce”. He is described as “handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent”, but he is also extremely psychotic and takes pleasure in killing and torturing people and animals.

Written in narrative as Bateman the reader experiences his highs, lows and killings in past and present tense. The book portrays a world we all can recognise, 1980’s booming economic America, and the world we all do not want to face because it is the worst nightmare of the society around them. The people the reader will meet in this novel are all of the same type; stock brokers, interested in “being seen”, dressing well, money, personal success and their background. A very selfish world where tycoons like Donald Trump are seen as idols and their life is so based upon routine that anything out of that is seen as unreal and is not believed, as we find out later in the book.

The life that fascinates the people he works, and competes with for the accounts and ultimately a partnership in the firm, is very superficial and in one instance they are all jealous of each other’s business cards, the type of paper, print type and even colour and smell. Everything that everybody is wearing to go to work, parties or meals is graphically described from the colour, style, designer and sometimes the year it was first produced, in almost a fanatical manner. But helps to highlight the way in which they get ahead in the world, by looking good and acting sophisticated.
As the book progresses we learn a lot about Patrick’s character, he is a cocaine user (as are his colleagues), possessions are very important to him (as they are to is colleagues
) but what sets Patrick apart from the rest are his homicidal thoughts, mainly directed towards people who he has no real contact with but despises for what they are, for example, a homeless person who is the opposite to him, poor, has a bad image, not that good looking and not successful. He also despises homosexual people and wonders how “a human being, a man, can take pride in sodomizing another man” (after seeing a “Gay Pride” march). Patrick lives in a selfish world where everyone is interested in his or her own situation, at a restaurant he is eating with a girl, Evelyn, she starts talking about plans for a hypothetical wedding and lamely asks him what he would like he replies “I’d want to bring a Harrison AK-47 assault rifle to the ceremony… with a thirty-round magazine so after I am through thoroughly blowing your fat mother’s head off with it, I could use it on that fag of a brother of yours”, she clearly is not listening at all because she talks about chocolates and a photographer. This is the environment Patrick lives in, people don’t listen to him or call him by somebody else’s name, this infuriates him but as image is so important he plays along and tries not to let it bother him, but clearly it does. He is so smooth in pulling the little psychotic slips into conversations that nobody notices, while in a club some girls ask him what he is “in to” and he simply replies “I’m into murders and executions mostly”, they don’t hear him because of the noise and when he repeats himself he says “Mergers and repossessions”, completely straight faced and without a single hint of wavering in his voice, this is the cold exterior he puts on.

Patrick harbours homicidal tendencies and we learn that he has killed his girlfriend’s housecleaner and put her head in his freezer. Yes, he is a nutter! He also takes his sheets to a Chinese drycleaners
and ends up getting angry with them because the ones he gets back still have “cranberry juice” on them! He goes on a series of random killings and enjoys a hedonistic lifestyle in private, he kills a rival at the stoke brokers, a couple of prostitutes who he films his dealings with before hand. He despatches one of them using a chainsaw and throws it at her as she runs down the stairs, not very pleasant. However, he does show a compassionate side when his secretary comes to his luxury, penthouse apartment and he says to her “I think you better go, I don’t know if I can control myself. If you stay, something bad will happen”, but I believe this change of heart is because of the long-standing relationship they have and the fact he believes she is “in love with him”. However, he does pull a nail gun out on her, and holds it to her head before backing off.

The book continues to highlight Patrick’s miserable life of selfishness, greed and being known to different people as different names. This finally pushes Patrick the limit and he loses control completely, while out in the city he gets caught by the Police while soliciting another prostitute and he shoots the Policeman, this causes a huge incident in which a lot of Policemen get killed and Patrick runs off to his apartment while Helicopters search the city. He phones his lawyer and confesses everything in a manic few minutes, and thinking he will finally get caught he goes to see his lawyer at a party and all his lawyer can do is congratulate Patrick on such a funny joke. This comes back to the life of routine where something so out of the norm is unbelievable. His lawyer sees this as unbelievable coming from Patrick, who is the “boy next door type”, according to his girlfriend and anything so horrific is impossible to be from him, the lawyer says that if “it were someone else he would have thought twice about it, but not you Patrick”.


The inner turmoil inside Patrick as he seems to have gotten away with his crimes seems to be lifted as he describes himself as “I have all the characteristics of a human being, but not one single, clear, identifiable emotion. I simply am not there ”. He has no pity for what he has done, nor has he any guilt. Evelyn calls him inhuman, and he describes himself by saying “my mask of sanity is about to slip”, implying he is a fake on the outside and his “night time” activities are the real Patrick Bateman.
A book made into a film, is recommended for mature audiences as it contains some graphic descriptions of violence and sexual activity. The film is available and is certified as “18”.

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