The Violence In The ‘American Psycho’

This chapter is focused on analysis of violence occurring in the book American Psycho, depicting the effect of excruciating torturing images on readers and explaining possible meanings of detailed brutal scenes.

3.1 FAMOUS BRUTAL SCENES

The novel’s reception was a controversial topic right from the beginning of its publication because the book has paradoxically reached its fame mostly thanks to approximately 5% of its whole content, where the various types of violence are described in a great detail. „The various murders and acts of torture could be seized upon as effectively the only content worth scrutinizing; and considered apart from the rest of the book, they are so objectionable that the “meaning” of the novel could be reduced to sensationalist exploitation.” (p. 24)

Why, indeed, are readers so surprised and shocked by detailed scenes describing torturing, sexual violence and cruel killing? It is nothing but what marquis de Sade depicted in his books two hundred years ago. In the whole era nobody, not even Ellis, has made up anything new and some passages are even inspired by de Sade: using animals for torturing victims, pouring acid onto genitals or arrangement of victims so that they look like crucified.

Unlike during reading de Sade, here the disgust from reading such bestialities is intensified by a long waiting for the horror. De Sade is mostly disgusting from the beginning to the end but in American Psycho a reader is obliged to go through one third of the book, which contains never-ending enumerations of brand names, luxurious overcharged restaurants and people’s names that are forgotten easily. It is just a long waiting and catching some hints that do not reveal any depth of its own meaning yet. Therefore this piece of dialogue ends up as a cynic response instead of an actual confession:

„Patrick is not a cynic, Timothy. He’s the boy next door, aren’t you honey? “

„No, I’m not,” I whisper to myself. „I’m fucking evil psychopath. “(p. 19)

During the waiting, comments about a head in a freezer or bloody bed sheets occur there but the first actual narrated act of violence is described after one third of the whole book. After a time consuming descriptions a reader is confronted with something, which activates his imagination very brutally. Until now there was no need to endeavour; it was just passive receiving of boredom.

These notoriously famous extracts are (not only by feminists from National Organization for Women [1] ) considered to be a detailed instruction manual how to kill women. Indeed, it is the matter of fact that female victims do appear more often than anyone or anything else here but Patrick Bateman also chooses men, children and even animals. The choice often seems to be driven by instantaneous decision. And although the descriptions are equal to a high-quality cooking recipe „How to cook a head step by step”, overwhelming majority of people should know their own limits of hurting other people and call such murderer a beast. This designation is not very proper. Of course, humans do share common behaviour with animals – they both fight to survive, they defend their territory and they defend themselves when feeling in a threat. The one with best prepared weapons wins; that is the law of the jungle. But only humans torture and kill for their own pleasure and gratification.

3.2 PROFILE OF A SERIAL KILLER

For the whole time the phrase „mass murderer” appears in the book; for example Patrick uses this specific term for labelling himself, his friends like this lexical collocation when talking about famous serial killers, which is Patrick’s favourite reading, and so on. Faktem vÅ¡ak je, že toto označení je chybné. Masoví vrazi vyvraždí mnoho lidí ve stejnou dobu na stejném místÄ›, kdežto sériový vrah své obÄ›ti likviduje postupnÄ› a v delÅ¡ím časovém úseku. Patrick je bizarním pÅ™íkladem vraha sériového. Jako dalÅ¡í známí vrazi tohoto typu, i on se jeví jako potomek fantazijních výtvorů markýze de Sade uvedených v praxi, ovÅ¡em jeÅ¡tÄ› více a intenzivnÄ›ji.

To understand the words “serial killer” in connection with Patrick Bateman more properly, it is essential to describe the overall characteristics of serial killers first.

Family is the first and most important social group everybody gets in touch with. Members of a family, mothers above all of them, have the main influence on a child’s personality and its development. Unstable, abusive or too strict families often cannot bring up their descendants as properly as it would be in a normal, functional family. Typical feature hidden within the childhoods of many serial killers is sexual molestation practiced on them by members of their families. The other features are alcoholism, criminal past or personality disorders. Children brought up in these conditions often follow these examples. Negative influence on boys is also caused by over-domineering mothers who raise their sons in the shadow of the superior female personality.

In their childhoods there can be seen bedwetting by nearly teen age and fascination with open fire (caused mostly by them). The less frequent but still common is torturing weak animals and sexually motivated proposals to children of the same age.

In spite of these cruel conditions they grow up in, such people are often characterized by the IQ that is highly above the normal range (that means 130 points and more), although some of them have IQ only on the average level. For example, combined IQ of the famous cannibalistic couple, Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole, was only about 160 points.

Despite being very intelligent, they are neither successful at school nor during their working carriers. In overwhelming majority of cases murderers find only menial jobs as manual workers and they are not able to keep it for a long period of time.

As far as their appearance is concerned, they are mostly white men below the age of forty. Their physical attractiveness is regarded as poor and they often do not know hot to treat opposite gender in long-term relationships.

Patrick is and extraordinary serial killer, indeed. Most of these characteristic features do not apply on him. There is very little information about his family; just a brief mention of his mother, father and brother Sean, but nothing about any pathological behaviour occurring in their family. Patrick’s IQ is probably quite high, although it is not mentioned anywhere. Readers can only estimate it as they read his narration. But he has no difficulties keeping his job, his long-term relationship with Evelyn is nothing complicated for him and his physical attractiveness is appropriate to what is required from young man from the upper-class society.

The most striking fact which does not really fit into a profile of a common serial killer is the choice of methods and victims. Patrick’s mind is apparently open to any idea, no matter how awkward it is. Thus a reader learns various kinds of using a nail gun, jumper cables or even cream cheese to inflict insufferable pain. He indeed usually does use a knife or a gun but does not seem to have a favourite instrument or tool unlike actual serial killers, who preferred just one type of killing for their whole „carrier”. The famous Boston strangler used only his own hands to choke women to death, Peter Kurten’s favourite tool was a hammer, Ed Gein „The Leatherface” loved his chainsaw and so on. Patrick is not so monotonously oriented. VÄ›tÅ¡inou na své obÄ›ti vyzkouÅ¡í nÄ›kolik things a dbá na to, aby oběť pÅ™ed smrtí co nejvíce trpÄ›la. It is often doubtful whether in the end the death is caused by pain, exhaustion, exsanguinations or fright.

Patrick is also a cannibal. From time to time he consumes parts of his human victims, but the reason is curiosity and insanity rather than perverse taste or even some kind of a feeling of inside connection with the person. In the unshot, people as individual personalities mean nothing for him:

“…while I grind bone and fat and flesh into patties, and though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I’m doing is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing, is shit…” (p. 332)

This sheer emotional impasibility is typical for malignant narcissists, who are organised social murderers suffering from lack of empathy, feelings of guilt and natural affection towards other people. In spite of that, they may be quite popular in society and sometimes even regarded as being pÅ™itažliví a tajuplní. Tento popis je Patrickovi vlastní – his attractive vzhled, uhlazené chování i společenský status, as well – to vÅ¡e svÄ›dčí pro vysokou společenskou prestiž a s tím spojené egocentrické chování. Tyto povrchní údaje mnoha lidem okolo nÄ›j obvykle stačí, aby si vytvoÅ™ili svou vlastní chybu prvního dojmu. And their opinion is well-founded. What reason could such a handsome and rich young man have to kill on a massive scale without remorse? And who would he actually choose as his victims?

Z údajné stovky obÄ›tí, ke kterým se Patrick pozdÄ›ji pÅ™iznává to an answering machine, se do narrated parts dostane pouze malá část of them: black homeless Al and his dog, prostitutes, ex-girlfriend, colleague from work, small child… This is the incomplete list of Patrick’s victims and here are two facts – the victims do not know each other and they come from assorted social classes and ethnical groups. The latter one is highly improbable phenomenon for a serial killer for such murderers are focused on a particular kind of people, most of which are young women or prostitutes, but children or ethnic minorities are common, as well. The inside rule seems to be clear – one murderer per one kind of victims. Patrick’s rule on the other side is different – the more the better, whoever or whatever it is.

Patrick likes playing with other people’s fates. Above all it is him who decides whether somebody stays alive or whether they die.

“…I’m hoping she realizes that this would have happened to her no matter what. That she would have ended up lying here, on the floor in my apartment, hands nailed to posts, cheese and broken glass pushed up into her cunt, her head cracked and bleeding purple, no matter what other choice she might have made; that if she had gone to Nell’s or Indochine or Mars or Au Bar instead of M.K., if she had simply not taken the cab with me to the Upper West Side, that this all would have happened anyway. I would have found her.” (p. 315)

It is like Patrick is able to predict what happens in the future because he himself is the one and the only creator of the impending events. So welcome to his own world of horror.

Jakkoliv misogynní se zdá být Patrickův postoj vůči ženám, je důležité poznamenat, že první vyprávÄ›né akty násilí are comitted against men and dogs, first of which is a homeless Al and his dog Gizmo. Al je černoch a jeho zmrzačení Patrickem je vyjádÅ™ením tÅ™ídní nenávisti, které je navíc podpoÅ™eno dÅ™ívÄ›jÅ¡ím obrázkem Patricka, kráčejícího through the antigue district below Fourteenth Street. ÄŒernoÅ¡i mu zde nabízejí crack and „someone in a Jean-Paul Gaultier topcoat takes a piss in an alleyway.” (p. 123) The streets are dirty and messy a potulují se zde podivní lidé. This is not where Patrick belongs to. This is not his part of the city. So why not make it smaller and more vulnerable by mutilating a piece of that? The hidden allegory on general class hatred is obvious here as the upper-class consciousness is built up on loathing everything that is not rich, powerful and white, which is simply different. The best they can do for them is to take a piss in their quarter.

The other acts of violence committed against men are murders. First an old queer and his sharpie and then Paul Owen, his acquaintance and a well-known figure in the upper-class society. The reason is the same thing for both of them – envy. Sharpei is a desired dog of Patrick’s so he is jealous about the old man owning a perfect one and Paul Owen is responsible for the legendary Fisher account, a diamond among stones of the investment-banking world.

Až doposud se nijak neprojevil jeho sexuální apetit, a pokud ano, Å¡lo o bezvýznamný pohlavní styk without any show of ferocity. But it is the first episode with the two prostitutes, Christie and Sabrina, that a reader gets the impression of Patrick behaving in a dangerous way towards women.

“I stand up and walk over to the armoire, where, next to the nail gun, rests sharpened coat hanger, a rusty butter knife, matches from the Gotham Bar and Grill and a half-smoked cigar; and turning around, naked, my erection jutting out in front of me, I hold these items out and explain in a hoarse whisper, “We’re not through yet…” An hour later I will impatiently lead them to the door, both of them dressed and sobbing, bleeding but well paid. Tomorrow Sabrina will have a limp. Christie will probably have a terrible black eye and deep scratches across her buttocks caused by the coat hanger.” (p. 169)

The women are terrified and injured but still alive. And readers are given nothing but a hint, which irritates their imagination. They only know the end of the episode because Patrick as the creator of events to vyjadřuje naprosto precisely in the future form.

Substantiation of these images about Patrick hurting and injuring women takes place for the first time in chapter called “Lunch with Bethany”. Bethany is an ex-girlfriend of Patrick’s. They met coincidentally and she invited him for lunch. During their meeting Patrick found her guilty of two essential things. “…she confesses that her boyfriend is Robert Hall, the chef and co-owner of Dorsia, that restaurant at which Patrick has no success in booking tables; and she tells him, giggling, that his prize objet-d’art, his David Onica painting, is hung upside down on his living room wall. She has thus one-upped him socially as well as culturally,…” (p. 41) So she had to die. And now, at last, all the expected but inexplicit incidents happen: nailing her hands to the floor, biting her fingers off and eating them, slicing her nipples off and cutting her tongue. How can readers be prepared for that? For such explosion of bestiality and torturing madness. Is this nothing else but what Patrick has been doing to women all the time hidden behind the mask of credibility? Is this what he has been avoiding in his narration until now? At the end of all, this may be the way his world works and he just wants to show what he is able to do as a vengeance, as a defence of his gigantic ego.

However, these abnormalities do not end with Bethany. Au contraire. se zdá, že od této chvíle se spíÅ¡e stupňují. BÄ›hem druhého setkání už Christie ani ta druhá one (tentokrát je to nÄ›jaká dívka jménem Elizabeth) naživu nezůstanou. DvÄ› dalÅ¡í dívky, Tiffany a Torii, jsou take zmasakrovány. Za absolutní top v PatrickovÄ› kreativitÄ› je považována epizoda s krysou being lured into a girl’s vagina potÅ™ená sýrem Brie. In this case Patrick is not even interested in the girl’s name.

Patrick does not know overall majority of his victims. People from lower-class society just do not belong to his world of luxury and the others, like Bethany or policemen (many of them he shots in chapter “Chase, Manhattan”), are not part of his social world. Bethany was his girlfriend at college but they broke up many years ago so they do not share any common acquaintances. Policemen or other victims from ordinary middle-class society, for example his neighbour Victoria or the child in the zoo, are just unknown to anyone he knows and therefore there can be no future connection with Patrick as a suspect.

But then there still remains Paul Owen, a person well known to everyone. Possession of Fisher account, which includes a list of advantages and privileges, makes him to be an icon for Patrick and his friends. It is an absolute necessity to get at the bottom of the mystery that Paul Owen is the right person to own such an admirable account and what pluses there are included. A tak Patrick zamluví stůl v TexarkanÄ› a snaží se z Paula vytáhnout informace.Ale Paul je ochoten sdÄ›lit pouze povrchní, banální informace a odvádí od tohoto tématu pozornost. Big mistake, because later it is such a pleasure for Patrick to využít pÅ™íležitosti that Paul Owen is absolutely convinced that Patrick Bateman is actually Marcus Halberstam, and cut him into pieces with his axe. Then he goes to Owen’s apartment, leaves a message in his answering machine (jeho hlas je tomu Owenovu údajnÄ› až incredibly similar) and “sends” him to London.

Some time after that incident he uses Owen’s apartment for the worst imaginable torturing and killing two girls; Tiffany and Torri (both of them mentioned above). So not only did he kill his “god of the investment-banking world”, he also znesvÄ›til his temple. And the most ironic fact about that? Když je Patrick vyslýchán detektivem, vyÅ¡etÅ™ujícím zmizení Paula Owena, zjistí, že tento detektiv již pro nÄ›j alibi dávno má.

“Now where were you?” He laughs.

I laugh too, though I’m not sure why. “Where was Marcus?” I’m almost giggling.

Kimball keeps smiling as he looks me over. “He wasn’t with Paul Owen,” he says enigmatically.

“So who was he with?” I’m laughing still, but I’m also very dizzy.

Kimball opens his book and for the first time gives me a slightly hostile look. “He was at Atlantis with Craig McDermott, Frederick Dibble, Harry Newman, George Butner and”- Kimball pauses, then looks up – “you.” (p. 263-264)

Mutual interchangeability plays its special role here as Patrick learns that v den Owenova zmizení byl údajnÄ› se svými pÅ™áteli at Atlantis. And Marcus Halberstam was there, too. So is it just another coincidence and confusion of names made by somebody else or was Patrick really at Atlantis and now he does not remember it? Would it be possible that he just made the murder up?

Patrick as a murderer combines many styles, tools, weapons and most significantly totally different kinds of people. With a great amount of exaggeration, his mind could serve as a handbook for serial killers called „How to spend your leisure time in a creative way”. Such a profile could not in reality fit into just one person. Ellis has created a mixture of various psychopaths, which is prepared to kill absolutely anyone and anything. He admits, though, that it is much more impressive for him to kill somebody who had a worthwhile past, built personal carrier and was surrounded by many people who would miss them.

“It’s so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child’s would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy.” (p. 288)

Thus Patrick feels only a mournful despair to have killed a small boy without any real history. And it can be easily assumed that killing animals is not so pleasurable, as well, unless there is a direct connection with the owner of a particular animal.

Patrick is a serial killer, a necrophile, a cannibal, a sexual sadist, a creative murderer and so on, except being a pedophile. These deviations indicate that Patrick is focused on him being in superiority over his weaker victims. It can also imply that he chooses this way to compensate some kind of inferiority complex of his. But where does it come from?

The answer seems to be really simple and will be closely analysed in the next part of the chapter “Violence”. His complex has its roots in the interchangeability of human individuals. Patrick wants to be exceptional somehow, so as long as it is not possible for him to be recognised in the society where money has its primal role, he will be searching for another area where he can rule.

3.3 POWER OF IMAGINATION

If a person feels hated, intimidated, humiliated, neglected or ignored by the other people, they escape to their own world where they create their own rules and nothing bad can happen to them because they are masters of their fantasy. How does this fit into Patrick? Without any doubts, he is a handsome, young, successful and rich man but attentive readers notice that there are some rozpory, kontrasty, zarážející fakta in the book that show Patrick is not as perfect as he seems to be for the first sight or as he thinks. First of all, he goes to work but he is never seen to be actually in a working process (because he never is). There is no need for him to work because Pierce&Pierce belongs to his family. All he does is having arranged appointments in luxurious restaurants by his secretary Jean. Then readers find out other surprising irrefutable facts. Patrick has the worst business card among his friends and colleagues, he is permanently unsuccessful in booking tables in Dorsia; the most prominent restaurant in the city, he is not able to buy good-quality drugs or get a limousine for Evelyn and he cannot remember one of Tom Cruise’s famous movies when talking to him in a lift. After all these discoveries readers are forced to conclude that he is incapable of living among such demanding and snobbish upper-class people. In fact, he is not even able to cook anything. When he tries to prepare a girl’s head as a meal, he admits having never cooked before.

Patrick is caught in what Gregory Bateson in his work “Steps to an Ecology of Mind” called “double bind”. “…- a situation in which no matter what a person does, he can’t win. It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms.” (p. 201)

Patrick tries really hard to make a good impression but all that happens is that he just preserves his status of being an interchangeable figure of the upper-class society as he does not own any valuable possession admired by others (unlike for example Paul Owen and his Fisher account). In the world of male dominance he does not differ in any way because it is only money and image that counts. Since he has nothing more to add than sufficient amount of money and decent image, his dream of being exceptional and recognised cannot become reality. Here, the impossibility to win is represented by Patrick’s ordinary existence that is not enough for him. Solution could be (imaginary) escape to a place where he has extraordinary power over the others.

Patrick does not seem to be a schizophrenic, though, and if he really is, then his mental decease is probably in its early stage. His behaviour demonstrates almost no symptoms accompanying schizophrenic personalities. But “almost no symptoms” still does not mean “none”. Although Patrick appears to be fully conscious most of the time, sometimes there are weak moments he is captured in. Chapters “A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon” and “Chase, Manhattan” end in the middle of sentence. It looks as if Patrick during his narration suddenly fainted or lost consciousness. Everything is so confusing and confused, including him. He may have been drugged or this disorganized thinking was a clear evidence of his continuing mental splitting. It only leads to questions that have been irritating readers’ minds for a long time: Does he really murder? Is he a terrifying serial killer? Is it not just a hoax coming from Patrick’s sick mind?

It has been recently noticed that some of Patrick’s deeds are highly doubtful; Paul Owen’s murder above all. Most of his victims were potentially supposed to serve as a revenge for offences against his infantile ego: the sharpei, Bethany or black homeless Al. Considering Patrick’s pathetic effort to make an impression and his systematic failure in everything he does (except killing), readers may be confronted with the hesitation whether it is an actual, real revenge or just imaginary one that takes place only in his fantasies.

The most bewildering thing that even encourages these thoughts is the great amount of women Patrick has butchered. The general idea would be that there must be a huge hatred inside that man. The reason for killing so many women can have two absolutely different explanations.

First, his girlfriend Evelyn is not a good source of intimacy, love and interest in his personality that would be sufficient for him. Nor is Patrick successful in making deep impression upon (???) other women. He is just an empty box for them with nothing appealing inside. Evelyn does not have to care about Patrick’s hobbies because she has her own ones. Prostitutes do not wonder what Patrick’s job is because it is enough for them to be well paid by him. Courtney just wants to have sex with him. Therefore Patrick has his revenge on assorted women for the lack of their (general female’s) interest.

The second explanation is a controversial one – Patrick may be a gay who hates women just from a homosexual principle. Many homosexual men are temporarily unable to put up with their orientation and sometime they loathe or hurt either objects of their desires or women who are not found attractive for them any more. Thus they try to solve their problems with sexual identity. Therefore killing women is also revenge for Patrick. It is possible that he does that as a kind of compensation. It is truth that he thinks some of them are pretty and he is able to rate them but as far as the usage of them is concerned, their mind and soul is deeply underestimated. There is nothing but flesh that remains, and even sex with that flesh is not satisfactory for him.

Series of confrontations with Luis Carruthers can be the key proof of Patrick’s latent homosexuality. First of them happens at Yale Club. Patrick chová odpuzující pocity vůči Luisovi because, according to him, Luis is a pathetic jerk with a lame sense for fashion and paradoxically lucky man to be dating with such attractive woman (Courtney). It is just a momentary idea to kill him so he tries to do that in the men’s room while Luis is pissing into the toilet. But this is exactly the point break where Patrick as a killer fails. During the strangulation Luis turns around and kisses Patrick’s wrist. His sixth sense somehow told him it was a long expected profession of love. Patrick is suddenly frozen; not only unable to kill him but even incapable of saying anything insulting. Given how effectively and heartlessly he normally kills his victims, this attempt must have been a complete failure for him.

When they meet again, Patrick says he does not find him “sexually attractive”, which is something a bit different than telling him that he is not a gay. Luis is therefore the only one Patrick could not kill even if he wanted and intended to. Nobody can be absolutely sure about Patrick’s sexual orientation but that man, Luis Carruthers, stayed alive for one reason – he is a homosexual – and this is the only truth that is left.

The violence in the book could be understood on the level of fantasy. It is Patrick’s revenge for social insults committed against his fragile ego as well as for his potential inability to put up with that fact that he might be a homosexual; the inability to admit he is one of those he treats with contempt.

His ridiculous existence throws him into the imaginary position of a successful killer as often as possible and maybe too often because sometimes it seems he is unable to recognise whether particular event really happened or not.

Let’s have a look at Paul Owen’s case. Patrick reputedly murdered him in his own apartment, got rid of his body, “sent” him to London and later used Owen’s apartment for the most brutal and disgusting butchering that is described in the book. So far, this story has appeared to be quite credible but in the chapter “The Best City for Business” the reliability of the narrator totally falls apart.

After some time, that is to say, Patrick returns to the crime scene to check what happened to the bodies (Tiffany and Torri) he left there. But the building looks different, the keys do not fit into the lobby door, the elevator operator is employed there (he was not there before) and Owen’s apartment has changed completely – the furniture has been replaced, new equipment has been added and the walls have been painted white. The cleanness is a total opposite to what Patrick remembers. The white walls, above all, shine like a metaphor of innocence. It is a new beginning of readers’ understanding to this story. All these facts together create an assumption that Patrick has never been there before. Nothing could have happened here.

Nevertheless, he meets Mrs. Wolfe there, a real estate agent, who seems to know something. She may, but she would rather forget about it and pretend nothing happened, than lose her money for that apartment. But after all the readers revealed, they may insist this all is only the impression given by the point of view of the narrator. Patrick is confronted with the disillusionment of not being the creator of all events. This is reality which has nothing to do with what he made up in his fantasy. This feeling only repeats when he tells Harold Carnes about Paul Owen. Not only does Carnes mistake Bateman for Davis (later for Donaldson) but he also regards his confession as a good joke. Patrick insists he killed Owen but the only response he gets is:

“But that’s simply not possible…It’s just not,” he says, eyeing me worriedly.

“Why not?” I shout again over the music, though there’s really no need to, adding “You stupid bastard.”

He stares at me as if we were both underwater and shouts back, very clearly over the din of the club, “Because…I had…dinner…with Paul Owen…twice…in London…just ten days ago.” (p. 373)

What a wonderful coincidence! Harold Carnes had dinner with Paul Owen in London – the same place Patrick had “sent” him after the murder. The truth is that Carnes made mistake with the surnames so he could have possibly mistaken Paul Owen, as well. But at the end of all, it can also be Patrick who cannot remember names properly (even though it is highly improbable because Paul Owen was recognised and respected by his friends and others).

When talking to Carnes, Patrick loses his temper, becomes nervous and shouts at him. Eventually, he is left alone in doubts about himself. Did he kill Paul Owen? The end of this case remains open. He failed as a narrator but he decided to include this dialogue in his narration none the less. It may have as well been the author who made that decision instead.

What about the other victims of Patrick’s? The time has just come to think about it retrospectively. None of his victims was missing. Neither bodies nor their parts were found. No neighbour ever complained about hearing chainsaw or nail gun. No headlines or articles in newspapers about brutal murders were printed. Did he kill at least somebody? Here, the decision is left upon readers.

4. ON THE MORAL ASPECTS OF AMERICAN PSYCHO

What is the origin of the evil that took control of Patrick’s mind? To solve this question it is helpful to ask what the origin of evil itself is. It can only exist as the opposite of good but what is the right and objective way of dividing everything into good and bad?

It is the evolution that has been changing human beings from the beginning of their existence, encouraging their permanent need to adapt to external conditions. Those who are able to keep up with the requirements of life are generally regarded as being flexible and strong units whereas the weak ones consider them being their enemies. It works the other way round, as well, so the division into what is good and what is bad or evil is strictly subjective point of view. The only difference is that the strong or powerful people do not take their so-called enemies seriously for a long period of time. The clue is that almost everyone finds himself a good person and judges the others accordingly. It is an offensive strategy that has its original roots in animal instincts.

Above all, it is the killing instinct that has considerable relevance here. Animals kill an intruder threatening their territory, they kill for food or in cases of being attacked, as has already been mentioned in previous chapter. The inevitable fact is that in jungle some of them (like predators) will always be stronger than the other ones, just like Paul Owen has always been more powerful than Patrick. But does it necessarily mean that Paul Owen is a bad character? No one should want a predator to hide its strength. It would be absurd.

Unlike animals, some of the weak unsuccessful people made up their own strategy of dealing with their weakness. They started to look for even weaker victims to compensate their cumulated anger on.

Patrick neither defends his work position nor social status (both of them being representatives of modern territorial interests). It is his narcissistic ego that is repeatedly insulted, but the principle remains the same – his potential enemies (judged subjectively, of course) “attack” him and as a consequence he seeks someone to injure or kill as compensation. Nowadays, killing is not an instinct anymore. It has been modified into the perverse way of solving problems and as such it is treated as undesirable because it is not compatible with moral rules of present society.

Strong people created ethics, law and moral codex, forbidding anyone to kill under the threat of being punished. By doing so, they invented virtual cages forcing people to suppress their natural defensive instincts and therefore the weaklings started to be dangerous for society. They became prisoners to themselves, caged like animals in zoo, fed by creators of the law and morale and forgetting their erstwhile instincts. As the matter of fact, the danger lies in minimisation and uniformity of such people and this is exactly what happened to Patrick in American Psycho. He (maybe) unconsciously entered the open gate to the zoo while the stronger human beings stayed outside.

So Patrick lives among strong people who are able to keep up with the moral rules. In this case, it might be because of their possible lack of interest in others. Patrick, in principle, desperately longs for respect and admiration but he never reaches that.

“And later my macabre joy sours and I’m weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing ‘I just want to be loved,’ cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer – all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible times. Maggots already writhe across the human sausage, the drool pouring from my lips dribbles over them,…” (p. 332)

This “die or adapt” is the key competence that Patrick does not have at his disposal. He lives in this upper-class society but only as one interchangeable unit in a crowd of nameless faces. Understandably, he would like to be someone else and so he has chosen a double life. His everyday life contains using mimicries – good orientation in fashion, advanced knowledge of expensive clubs and restaurants and know-how of proper behaviour. Some animals do so, as well; it is very useful and practical, but it is still just a mask. Pretence. His dream life is focused on him in superior position. Whether it is fantasy or not has been left upon the individual decision of each reader but the fact is that Patrick has to hide it, no matter how truthful or far-fetched it is.

In his own world Patrick is a dreaded organiser who looks for revenge. If possible, his revenge is done on the predators themselves, like in case of Bethany and Paul Owen. Its purpose is not only killing them, but also humiliating them entirely.

paraf. Nietzsche …at last, it is him who tastes that exalting feeling that he is allowed to humiliate and mutilate a creature like something which is “bellow him”; or at least – in case that the law itself, the execution of the punishment has been transferred to “the authorities” -, that he can saw the creature being humiliated and mutilated. (p. 48)

Of course, the important step is weakening the victim. Thus Bethany was lured into Patrick’s apartment and nailed to the floor and Paul was drunk and therefore disoriented. The humiliation itself does not consist of killing them but in the way their bodies and possession are treated, because the death itself is the final punishment for both sides. Victims forcibly end their lives unable to survive any longer and Patrick, the punisher, loses them forever, therefore there is nothing more to enjoy.

All the other murders are committed against clearly weaker people or animals than Patrick is. It is pleasant for him to see the suffering but even better to cause it personally. He chooses his victims very well – they are easy to beguile, easy to injure and without any potential chance to escape. Exactly these things make his life highly implausible. It all goes well just too easily. A synthesis of something non-human and superhuman is what must be hidden in his abilities.

If this all ever happened to be true, what kind of law-makers would never even notice that devil terrorizing the city and breaching all rules? Only the deliberately blind ones. Only those who do not want to see the truthful biography of a man because the reality would be simply insufferable.

But who are those mighty authorities to make decisions about allowed and forbidden acts? Actually, no one even cares now. The rules have been followed for centuries until they became just a habit or convention that society is still aware of.

The eventual tragedy happens at the end of the book where Patrick realizes his confession meant utterly nothing. He can see now his “masterpiece” from the relatively objective point of view; he gained a detached view over everything he has gone through: nonsense in the upper-class society’s behaviour, trivial relationships, logic of his own life, murders he probably never committed and continuing disintegration:

“I’m having a sort of hard time paying attention because my automated teller has started speaking to me, sometimes actually leaving weird messages on the screen, in green lettering, like “Cause a Terrible Scene at Sotheby’s” or “Kill the President” or “Feed Me a Stray Cat,” and I was freaked out by the park bench that followed me for six blocks last Monday evening ait it spoke to me. Disintegration – I’m taking it in stride.” (p. 380)

There is a big possibility that his problems will sooner or later develop in schizophrenia but for now he is still able to function in society as an inconspicuous, almost invisible part. More paradoxically, he may laugh at his narration if he wants to because, whether at least some of the horrors have happened or not, Patrick went unpunished by the others. It is only his self-consciousness that has changed and began to understand there is something evil inside Patrick’s head.

So why should he be so significant for readers? Did he change anything in his world? Or maybe in readers’? All they definitely know for sure is that Patrick does not represent any historical real personality. He is just a fiction. Although readers of literature typically expect that villains will be punished for their bad deeds, Patrick is not.

First way of final looking at him may be that he represents the collocation “stay unpunished” itself by being one of the upper-class society who is often told to get away with troubles. The second way may irritate readers’ opinions a bit. For the whole time he might have as well served as a reflection of people’s minds. Not only pathological personalities sometimes imagine cutting the attacker in half. Of course, not all people go so far with their dreams and fantasies. It can be enough for them to imagine verbal offence or a slap. It is better to stay with the image in one’s head, though, because nothing is worse than do something wrong by taking the “law” into one’s own hands and then regret it hopelessly. On the virtual level there can never be any consequences. It is right the opposite. By dreaming people can keep themselves on the sufficient level of self-confidence.

The human Patrick is caged in has taught him one essential thing – staying passive is the best way of living. And he does so, but his mind goes wild because it is simply impossible to suppress one’s instincts completely. Here, morale and law dictate the adaptation and enclose society in separate cages. Most of people make their cages comfortable and live their “happy” lives inside. Those unable to endure such restriction try to break the iron bars around them or at least imagine what it is like to be free. But they breach the rules by doing so.

To escape from the morale means to leave the human zoo (which is society). For now, morale for people is like zoo for animals.