Section 3

American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis

Pages 199-300

Plot Summary/Characters

• Patrick has a model named Daisy over to his apartment. After a while, he asks her to leave because he thinks that he might hurt her. No reason is given for why he doesn't kill her.
• Patrick goes to dinner with Paul Owen. Paul gets drunk, and then Patrick invites him over to his apartment. When Paul has his back turned, Patrick sneaks up and axes him repeatedly. Then he goes to Paul's apartment, packs a suitcase, and creates a voicemail message saying that Paul is out of the country.
• Patrick's brother, Sean, comes for a visit and they go out to dinner for his birthday. Patrick is jealous that Sean was able to get reservations for Dorsia, a popular restaurant.
• Next, Patrick goes on a lunch date with an ex-girlfriend, Bethany. He becomes very jealous when she tells him that her boyfriend owns Dorsia. He invites her to his apartment, and she reluctantly accepts. There, Patrick attacks her and tortures her by nailing her hands to a board with a nailgun and repeatedly spraying Mace in her face. He then rapes her as she dies. She finally dies when Patrick saws off her arm and beats her in the face with it.
• An entire chapter is spent talking about Whitney Houston, who Patrick likes.
• Patrick invites his secretary Jean to go to dinner. She has a great time since she has a huge crush on Patrick.
• Evelyn and Patrick go to the Hamptons for the summer. They spend their time playing tennis, riding bikes, etc. Patrick says that he genuinely tried to make things work with her during this time, but he also talks about how he feels something emotionally that he just can't describe.
• Christie, the prostitute, comes over again. This time, Patrick convinces her and Elizabeth, an old friend, to have sex. Then he attacks them, stabbing Elizabeth with a butcher knife and torturing Christie with matches before finally killing her.
• Luis Carruthers approaches Patrick in a store. He repeatedly confesses his love for Patrick, and Patrick repeatedly tells him to leave. Patrick threatens to kill Luis, but that doesn't stop him. Patrick eventually leaves the store.
• Patrick goes for a walk and ends up in the zoo. Just for the heck of it, he stabs a little boy in the neck with a knife, killing him. He then says that he didn't like it, and that he prefers to kill adults because they have more opportunities and it will hurt more people if they die.
• Patrick also meets Donald Kimball, a private investigator who was hired to investigate Paul Owen's disappearance. Donald doesn't suspect a thing.

Personal Reaction

This is the first book that has actually made me feel sick reading it. The murder of Bethany was completely disgusting. With movies, I usually only feel bad for the characters when they are well-developed and then get killed. But Bethany was a very minor character and not even particularly likable. But her murder was so graphic and so descriptive that I was really uncomfortable reading it.

The murders of Elizabeth and Christie were also gross, though not as bad as Bethany's. This sounds odd, but I was disappointed that Christie's death scene from the movie was not kept in the book. In the movie, Patrick tries to eat Elizabeth alive and Christie escapes from the apartment. Patrick runs after her, naked by the way, with a chainsaw and kills her by dropping the chainsaw over a balcony when she runs beneath it. It was the most memorable scene for me and was actually really scary.

The murder of Paul Owen was also nasty. Patrick describes how his brain begins to run out of his skull after being struck with the axe. I really could have done without reading that. I wasn't expecting that death to be so graphic in the book because in the movie it isn't and is mostly offscreen. Actually, I think all of the deaths in the movie are offscreen. I can understand why, though. These deaths are way too explicit to be shown in a movie.

And the murder of the little boy was so sad. I don't like kids dying in books or movies, so it was really effective. And what made it worse was that Patrick didn't even care.

Other than the deaths, this wasn't an especially interesting section. The only other memorable scene was when, after killing Paul, Patrick is talking to a couple he knows in a store. The couple has a baby, and Patrick begins telling the baby all about his murders. He tells her this talking in "baby-talk." That was a really odd and disturbing scene.

Oh, and I want to talk about Jean, Patrick's secretary. For some reason I really like her as a character. She seems like such a sweet person, and is the only person even remotely like that in the book. I think it also has to do with her in the movie. The actress who played her was very good, and made a very likable character even though she wasn't in it much.

Additional Thoughts

Patrick Bateman

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000)

Appearance:

Patrick is attractive. He has flawless skin according to Helga, a masseuse. He is also very muscular from working out for hours each day. He is apparently so muscular that when he flexes his arm his shirt sleeve will rip slightly. Other than that he never describes himself physically.

Actions:

Patrick works out for hours on end each day. He is constantly going to new and fancy restaurants with his friends. He enjoys drinking, especially J&B on the rocks. He also does cocaine on a regular basis.

As for his more sinister actions, Patrick is very violent and enjoys dragging out his victims' deaths. He also goes to the video store often to rent horror movies because he enjoys scenes where women are killed or tortured.

Ideas/Thoughts:

Patrick gets jealous easily, and feels resentment towards those that he is jealous of. He is highly materialistic as well. At one point, he decides to purchase a tanning bed for his apartment (despite admitting that he doesn't have room for it) just because he learned that a colleague had his own tanning bed. He will describe in great detail what someone is wearing and judges the person based on that.

He often interjects murderous thoughts into his regular thoughts, and doesn't think twice about it.

He also tends to be very random. When he is disinterested in a conversation, his mind will begin to wander. He can go from what the person is talking about, to something he read in a magazine, to a murderous thought, to The Patty Winters Show (which he watches everyday), to practically any other possibility.

Patrick also often thinks about himself. He repeatedly says that despite physically being a person, he was no emotional qualities to make him human. Despite claiming to have no emotions, he still feels jealousy, rage, and confusion.

Reactions to Other Characters:

Patrick feels resentment towards most characters. He doesn't like Evelyn, even though they are engaged. He seems to like Courtney more, although this could be because he claims that she has a perfect body.

He is jealous of Paul Owen because Paul is handling the Fisher account at work. This is probably why he kills Paul.

Patrick despises Luis Carruthers. In fact, Patrick is very homophobic and mentions this quite often. He is also very racist. He also hates the homeless, and tempts them with money which he then keeps, or calls them rude names.

The only character he isn't completely hateful to is Jean, although he is still rude to her.

Why he is important:

Well, he's the main character. He is the American Psycho. I'm not sure what else to say about this, except for without him there would be no story. The other characters would just lead normal lives and none of them would be in danger.

Why I like or dislike him:

This is a complicated one. On one hand, you can't like him. He is rude, hateful, homophobic, racist, and crazy. He has no emotions other than rage and jealousy. Normally it would be insane to like someone that tortures people to death for no reason.

But Bret Easton Ellis has created a psychopath that isn't completely unlikable. Well, it isn't that he's likable, but you just can't hate him. He is so rude and mean that it's almost funny. A lot of his personality is funny, like he can't meet someone without describing what they're wearing. Or how he is obsessed with The Patty Winters Show. I don't know if this is a real show or not, but it sounds like a talk show along the lines of Oprah. It just doesn't seem like a show he would watch, but he watches it every day and even tapes the episodes so he can watch them later.

So on one hand I can't like him because of what he does, but other elements of his personality are pretty funny.