Gelderloos 1

Carlie Gelderloos

Ms. Bradshaw

AP Lit

2/22/22

Superficiality in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho

American Psycho, published in 1991 and written by Bret Easton Ellis, has always been

incredibly controversial. Many have argued that it is violent just for violence’s sake or that this

book was written solely for the shock factor. While this is debatable, there is a clear deeper

meaning behind American Psycho, which is also present in Bret Easton Ellis’ other novels, such

as Less than Zero and Rules of Attraction. Bret Easton Ellis wrote American Psycho as a satirical

novel to highlight the negative effects of consumer culture and superficiality within American

society, by using Wall Street as a small extreme example.

The novel American Psycho is centered around Wall Street yuppie Patrick Bateman, who

is currently in his prime. He is young, rich, educated, and extremely good-looking. He is the

American Dream. Throughout the novel, it is shown that Patrick and his friends take great pride

in keeping up with their appearances. His friends, Timothy Price, David Van Patten, Craig

McDermott, and Luis Carruthersspend much of their time grooming themselves and this causes

them to end up looking alike, which makes them often get mistaken for one another. With all

these men being immensely dull, they are essentially clones of one another, with similar

mannerisms and patterns of speech (Brock). Each individual is obsessed with fitting in so they

essentially become clones of each other. Because of this, it can almost be said that not a single

character in American Psycho exists since they are all the same, (Eldridge).
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In fact, appearances are one of the only things that matter to them. When Van Patten tells

Patrick that he has his own tanning bed at home instead of going to a tanning salon regularly,

Patrick is enraged (Ellis 48). He feels as though he has been put to shame by one of his

counterparts as if it’s utterly impossible that someone could be better than him. Never once does

he take a second to stop and consider that this is supposed to be his friend and he is supposed to

be happy for him. They live in such a superficial society that instead of having empathy for one

another, they are nothing but jealous creatures. They have no real relationships with depth

because they are unable to see value in one another. Patrick and his friends spend all their time

and all their money constantly trying to one-up each other because they live deep within a

capitalistic society, where nothing else matters other than your social status.

While looking at Patrick Bateman’s character and his social environment, you have to

look at him from a strictly “American” perspective to explain his odd behavior. Hence the name

American Psycho (Eldridge). Peering through this lens allows the reader to view Ellis’ vision to

show the audience how harmful our capitalistic American society is. Capitalism is an inherently

superficial system that enforces the belief that the human instinct of self-preservation and

competition will promote wealth and prosperity. With the basis of capitalism being consumer

culture, Patrick Bateman and his friends are sizable consumers, Patrick being the ultimate

consumer considering he is a serial killer. Patrick Bateman quickly earns himself this title

as the main “protagonist”. Bret Easton Ellis sets Patrick Bateman as a Wallstreet yuppie for this

exact reason, so Bateman has easy access to the three main sources of consumption: purchasing,

eating, and destruction, (Cohen; Allué). As critic Sonia Baclo Allué said,

“Related to Bateman’s obsessive consumerism is his obsession with brand names and

labels, which is not just a sign of his social status since in the course of the narrative it
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acquires other, more symbolic, meanings. He looks not at his watch but at his ‘Rolex’, he

drinks not whisky but ‘J&B’, nor water but ‘Evian’,” (Allué).

Referring to all these things as their brand name and only caring about things if they are

expensive, such as restaurants and products. He lives a life so superficial that even though a

“Rolex” and a watch are the same things, Patrick Bateman would still prefer the Rolex.

His urge to own these materialistic things is rooted in his need to give his life purpose.

The entirety of American Psycho is built upon an empty and meaningless world, (Cohen). The

book itself is just a series of mundane scenes and bland day-to-day narrations. Roger Cohen

compares this world to a world where “...clothes have more value than skin, objects are worth

more than bones, and the human soul is something to be sought with knives and hatchets and

drills,” Patrick Bateman lives an incredibly boring life in which everything is the same. Nothing

in his life holds any value, there are no meaningful relationships, and money is useless. The

struggle of such a story is that it is especially difficult to build an impactful fictional universe out

of meaninglessness. The novel American Psycho italicized the amount of nothing within Patrick

Bateman’s astonishingly superficial lifestyle, (Cohen).

Patrick Bateman begins killing people to give himself a purpose. As soon as he begins his

spree, Patrick Bateman goes from being your average Wall Street yuppie to a serial killer. Even

after attempting to give himself this double portrait facade, he comes to a realization during his

attempted confession, “...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but

there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and

you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our

lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there” (Ellis 376-377). Even while trying to
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narrate himself as a serial killer, he fails at that aspect too. The truth is, there is nothing he has to

offer himself in this shallow, vapid life he leads.

There are some aspects to this that readers can relate to and some aspects of this that

readers should not be able to relate to. As a whole, the audience is not supposed to relate to

Patrick Bateman. The horrific scenes included and the things he says should be enough for

anybody to ensure that. In Sonia Allué’s literary criticism,

“As Elizabeth Young has pointed out, after the major killings there are whole chapters

completely given over to strange, bland analyses of pop music (1992b:112) . . . Unlike

conventional pop transcendence, these episodes do not work as a means of obliterating

the horror narrated in the preceding chapters. Their strategic position in the narration each

one occurring after a murder, changes their significance: they stress the horror narrated in

the preceding chapters,” (Allué).

Unlike in other novels such as A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, which created its own

lingo and slang to reduce the sense of horror felt throughout the storyline and consequently allow

us to feel empathy for the protagonist. In American Psycho, all of the horror is very

straightforward. Bateman describes his every action, almost robotic as if he is describing how to

bake his favorite batch of cookies. Afterward, giving these dull analyses of music gives a much

more superficial feel to the murders. It is almost as if they are so insignificant, we can just

discuss music as soon as the deed is done. This is the reason nobody should ever relate to Patrick

Bateman himself. Not only did he try to eat people, but this is because he views people as

commodities (Brock), since he gets everything he wants, he’s used to it. He comes from money,

so he grew up getting everything he wanted. Because of the superficiality that comes with large

amounts of money, he doesn’t feel guilty for killing people because he views people as objects.
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Bateman kills people to own them because he is able to buy everything and own anything he

wants, (Kooijman).

This is not the first time that Bret Easton Ellis has written disturbing novels regarding

superficiality within society, although he did not plan on American Psycho becoming as violent

as it ended up, (ContemporaryLiteraryCriticism 57). This is a seemingly common theme

throughout novels that he writes, starting with his very first published book when he was in his

20s, Less than Zero. Published in 1985, this novel depicts the story of wealthy teenagers in Los

Angeles who get sucked into a plethora of drugs and violent revelries,

(ContemporaryLiteraryCriticism 56). In the novel Less Than Zero, the teenagers exhibit clear

signs of superficiality and cosmetic obsession in a series of 208 pages and 108 very short

chapters. With the scenery and actions regularly changing, these short chapters can almost be

comparable to the rapidly changing clips shown on MTV, (Allué). Correlating Less than Zero’s

brief chapters with MTV’s clips, which was a large media source at the time, shows how

superficial Ellis thought society was. The teenagers depicted in Less than Zero spend the

majority of their time at salons keeping themselves beautiful, and the rest partying and having

fun. Similar to American Psycho, none of them have any real value to their relationships. All

they can do is focus on their appearance and having a good time. American Psycho and Less than

Zero are almost parallels because they both contain content that portrays a superficial society

consisting of rich, self-obsessed individuals who don’t care about one another and do drugs

while taking part in violent acts due to overconsumption, being too much money, and too much

substance.
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This constant overconsumption has made everyone view the world from an excessively

surface perspective, and Patrick Bateman knows this. While having a conversation with his

secretary, Jean, Patrick comes to a realization of how he views civilization.

“Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason.

Desire–meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination,

innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really

felt anymore. Reflection is useless. The world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence.

God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone

found meaning… This was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged.” (Ellis 375)

Bret Easton Ellis is indirectly telling us how society has become through Patrick Bateman’s

mindset. Individuality isn’t even real, we are all the same. Desire does nothing but brings greed.

Society has become inherently superficial through the years, especially with media constantly

growing. After writing Less Than Zero, Ellis became the voice of this mindset, writing bookings

to put a spotlight on how meaningless our lives have become.

The American Dream is deeply rooted in superficiality. It is to simply be good-looking

and rich. To have the ability to buy and consume as you wish, to own any commodity you desire.

In order to live the American Dream, there are no limits, but there are also no relationships. In

capitalist America, where the main focus is to make money to be happy, generations are taught

that money buys happiness, and in order to be successful, you need to focus on making money,

as opposed to building relationships and experiencing the world around you,

(ContemporaryLiteraryCriticism). Class is a common theme within American Psycho, commonly

referencing the popular musical Les Miserables, making its first appearance on page 3. A

musical about the French Revolution revolving around class struggle within France, it is
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commonly brought up within the book around homeless people. Such as in the first chapter,

when Bateman and his friends are all going out for dinner, one of Bateman’s friends spots a

homeless man and is immediately put in a bad mood. He goes straight to speaking very poorly of

lower-class people, even going as far as going “clusters of bums,” all the while, Les Miserables

posters are spotted everywhere along with graffiti referencing the musical (3-7). Directly

comparing this musical about class struggle and the overwhelming amount of classism presented

to us within American Psycho, it can be inferred that Bret Easton Ellis continually referenced Les

Miserables to show that class struggle is an insurmountable issue within American society as

well.

Though disturbing novels such as Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and Less than Zero

and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange may make our stomachs turn and make us feel

discontent with humanity, novels like these truly inconsistencies and issues within our current

society, no matter how difficult it may be to come to terms with. It is important to take these

pieces of content and think of how these concepts apply to our own lives and our current society.

With American Psycho, it’s imperative to notice the superficiality painted within the pages of this

novel and understand that this consumerist society is the cause for that. Bret Easton Ellis wrote

American Psycho as an extreme example of how consumer culture is having a negative effect on

our lives. This isn’t just a novel written solely for shock factor or horror purposes. This is a novel

to make you think and reflect on the world that we live in.
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Work Cited

Allué, Sonia Baclo. "Serial Murder, Serial Consumerism: Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho

(1991).1." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 229, Gale,

2007. Gale Literature Criticism,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/IWGTNS623792729/LCO?u=musk63060&sid=bookmark-LCO

&xid=53dc6656. Accessed 28 Jan. 2022. Originally published in Miscelánea, vol. 26,

2002, pp. 71-90.

“Bret Easton Ellis.” ContemporaryLiteraryCriticism. Vol. 39 1964

Brock, Leigh. "Distancing in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho." Contemporary Literary

Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 229, Gale, 2007. Gale Literature Criticism,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/EUHAFN592396127/LCO?u=musk63060&sid=bookmark-LCO

&xid=553ad374. Accessed 28 Jan. 2022. Originally published in Notes on Contemporary

Literature, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan. 1994, pp. 6-8.

Cohen, Roger. "Bret Easton Ellis Answers Critics of American Psycho." Contemporary Literary

Criticism, edited by Thomas Votteler and Laurie DiMauro, vol. 71, Gale, 1992. Gale

Literature Criticism,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/BZXZAO816880508/LCO?u=musk63060&sid=bookmark-LCO

&xid=bdcdade8. Accessed 2 Feb. 2022. Originally published in The New York Times, 6

Mar. 1991, p. C13.

Eldridge, David. "The Generic American Psycho." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by

Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 345, Gale, 2013. Gale Literature Criticism,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/XWMPMX220996402/LCO?u=musk63060&sid=bookmark-LC

O&xid=d3b72e0a. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

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Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. Vintage Contemporaries, March 1991.

Kooijman, Jaap, and Tarja Laine. "American Psycho: A Double Portrait of Serial Yuppie Patrick

Bateman." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 229, Gale,

2007. Gale Literature Criticism,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/CNLGTH928254387/LCO?u=musk63060&sid=bookmark-LCO

&xid=3841853e. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022. Originally published in Post Script, vol. 22, no.

3, Summer 2003, pp. 46-56.