Patrick Bateman works at the fictional Wall Street firm of Pierce & Pierce (also Sherman McCoy's firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities) and lives on the Upper West Side in the American Gardens Building (where he is a neighbor of actor Tom Cruise). In his "secret life", however, Bateman is a serial killer who murders a variety of people, from colleagues to several prostitutes. His crimes, including rape, torture, murder and cannibalism, are described in graphic detail in the novel.
Bateman comes from a wealthy family. His parents have a home on Long Island, and he mentions a summer home in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, while his mother became sick and now resides at a sanatorium. His father grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in a New York hotel. His younger brother Sean attends Camden College (and is portrayed in the preceding novel and later feature film, "Rules of Attraction"). Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school. He graduated from Harvard University in 1984, and Harvard Business School two years later and moved to New York City.
According to his fiance, Evelyn, Bateman's father "practically owns the company". As a result, he spends little time in his office and does very little work while he is there. While in the office, he appears to spend most of his time on trivial amusements such as crossword puzzles, doodling, watching television, listening to the latest pop music, and reading violent pornography.
When not in the office, Bateman spends his free time nightclubbing, eating at trendy restaurants, working out, or visiting various health clubs and tanning salons. At home, he enjoys watching videotapes, particularly pornography and slasher films, and a fictional talk show called The Patty Winters Show. Bateman often uses the phrase "returning videotapes" as an excuse to account for the time he has spent torturing and killing his victims, as well as a convenient way to excuse himself from the company of others. Bateman also reads biographies of other serial killers, such as Ed Gein and Ted Bundy, frequently slipping in bizarre facts relating to them amid everyday conversations.
Bateman is an avid music fan, particularly of mainstream pop and pop-rock. He specifically enjoys the music of Talking Heads, and he discusses at length Genesis, Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis & the News (there are whole chapters devoted to each of these three musical icons). He also listens to jazz (Dizzy Gillespie and Bix Beiderbecke).
Patrick Bateman is an archetypal psychopath
exhibiting nearly all classic symptoms such as: the
lack of a sense of guilt or remorse,
a lack of empathy towards others in general
, resulting in tactlessness, insensitivity, and contemptuousness, a tendency to make a good, likable first impression, a superficial charm, enabled by a low self-consciousness, and a willingness to say anything without concern for accuracy or truth. On several occasions he is shown to pattern his actions after people in his immediate vicinity, such as when he is preoccupied and unable to respond appropriately. It is not uncommon for psychopaths who try to blend in, to live "two lives," often modeling their behavior on people they believe are normal.
As written by Ellis, Bateman is the ultimate stereotype of yuppie greed: rich, shallow, and addicted to sex, recreational drugs and conspicuous consumption. All of his friends look alike to him (to the point that he often confuses one for another, and they often confuse him for other people), but he
obsessively details every single feature
of his clothes, stereo, workout routine, and business card. He is engaged to an equally rich, shallow woman named Evelyn. They can't stand each other, but they stay together for the sake of their social lives. He has a mistress on the side (the fiancée of a colleague he hates) and has regular liaisons with prostitutes and women he encounters at clubs, many of whom end up being his victims.
The one woman (and possibly the one person) in his life he has anything approaching feelings for is his secretary, Jean. He just cannot bring himself to seduce, rape or kill her, perhaps because she is the only person in his life who is not completely shallow. Every time he mentions Jean throughout the novel, he casually acknowledges her as "Jean, my secretary who is in love with me" and, upon our first introduction to Jean, she is someone he "will probably end up married to someday".
While on the surface, Bateman seems to be the embodiment of the suave, attractive and successful businessman, he appears to loathe himself as much as he does everyone else; he kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate, usually by having better taste than he does (Paul Owen's superior reservation skills, business card and handling of the prestigious Fisher account, for example). His friends mock him as the "boy next door," his own lawyer refers to him as a "bloody ass-kisser...a brown-nose goody-goody," and he is often dismissed as "yuppie trash" by people outside of his social circle.
Bateman often expresses doubts regarding his own sanity, and he has periodic attacks of psychosis, during which he hallucinates. He often experiences feelings of depersonalization. In his own words, "...though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I am simply not there." Although Bateman often claims that he is devoid of emotion, he also describes experiencing moments or periods of extreme rage, panic or grief, often over trivial inconveniences such as not being able to get a good table at a restaurant. In the middle of killing and dismembering a victim, he breaks down, sobbing that he "just wants to be loved" (although the sincerity of this admission is extremely questionable).
Bateman compensates for these inabilities and insecurities through obsessive vanity and personal grooming, with unwavering attention to detail. He dresses in the most fashionable, expensive clothing possible (e.g. Valentino suits, Oliver Peoples glasses and Jean Paul Gaultier overnight bags) as a means of affecting some "control" over his otherwise chaotic life. Likewise, he categorizes people by what they wear and how they look because they are more easily "understood" in terms of labels and stereotypes. Bateman's apartment also is firmly controlled in terms of look and taste, with the latest music, food, and paintings. People as three-dimensional beings are unpredictable and impossible to understand, but people in terms of attire and appearance are much more easy for Bateman to grasp.
Publicly, Bateman presents the façade of a sensitive and caring liberal. He expresses a stereotypically left-wing concern for issues such as AIDS, environmentalism, education, racism, sexism, pollution, abortion, immigration, materialism (as ironic as that may be), and the economy. However, Bateman is actually a virulent sexist, racist, classist, elitist, militarist, fascist, conformist, chauvinist, misogynist, masochist, sadist, extremist and homophobic necrophiliac, abusing his girlfriends, gays (though he enjoys seeing his female partners engage in lesbian sex), minorities, and the homeless even when not actually torturing or killing them. He also deliberately invests in companies with racist policies while contributing to the legal defense of Robert Chambers.
Bateman does not fit the "typical" profile of a serial killer, as he kills more or less indiscriminately, with no preferred type of victim and no consistent or preferred method of killing. Throughout the novel, he kills men, women, a child, and animals. He kills women mostly for sadistic sexual pleasure, often during or just after sex, and is also a prolific rapist. He kills men because they anger or annoy him, and the child just to see if he would enjoy it (which he doesn't).
Periodically, he matter-of-factly confesses his crimes to his friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers ("I like to dissect girls do you know I'm utterly insane?") just to see if they are actually listening to him. They either are not, or think he is joking. In the climactic scene, he calls his lawyer and leaves a lengthy, detailed message confessing all of his crimes. He later runs into his lawyer, who mistakes him for someone else. Bateman is never arrested for the enormous number of murders he commits.
Bateman comes from a wealthy family. His parents have a home on Long Island, and he mentions a summer home in Newport. His parents divorced sometime earlier, while his mother became sick and now resides at a sanatorium. His father grew up on an estate in Connecticut, and now owns an apartment in a New York hotel. His younger brother Sean attends Camden College (and is portrayed in the preceding novel and later feature film, "Rules of Attraction"). Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school. He graduated from Harvard University in 1984, and Harvard Business School two years later and moved to New York City.
According to his fiance, Evelyn, Bateman's father "practically owns the company". As a result, he spends little time in his office and does very little work while he is there. While in the office, he appears to spend most of his time on trivial amusements such as crossword puzzles, doodling, watching television, listening to the latest pop music, and reading violent pornography.
When not in the office, Bateman spends his free time nightclubbing, eating at trendy restaurants, working out, or visiting various health clubs and tanning salons. At home, he enjoys watching videotapes, particularly pornography and slasher films, and a fictional talk show called The Patty Winters Show. Bateman often uses the phrase "returning videotapes" as an excuse to account for the time he has spent torturing and killing his victims, as well as a convenient way to excuse himself from the company of others. Bateman also reads biographies of other serial killers, such as Ed Gein and Ted Bundy, frequently slipping in bizarre facts relating to them amid everyday conversations.
Bateman is an avid music fan, particularly of mainstream pop and pop-rock. He specifically enjoys the music of Talking Heads, and he discusses at length Genesis, Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis & the News (there are whole chapters devoted to each of these three musical icons). He also listens to jazz (Dizzy Gillespie and Bix Beiderbecke).
Patrick Bateman is an archetypal psychopath
exhibiting nearly all classic symptoms such as: the
lack of a sense of guilt or remorse,
a lack of empathy towards others in general
, resulting in tactlessness, insensitivity, and contemptuousness, a tendency to make a good, likable first impression, a superficial charm, enabled by a low self-consciousness, and a willingness to say anything without concern for accuracy or truth. On several occasions he is shown to pattern his actions after people in his immediate vicinity, such as when he is preoccupied and unable to respond appropriately. It is not uncommon for psychopaths who try to blend in, to live "two lives," often modeling their behavior on people they believe are normal.
As written by Ellis, Bateman is the ultimate stereotype of yuppie greed: rich, shallow, and addicted to sex, recreational drugs and conspicuous consumption. All of his friends look alike to him (to the point that he often confuses one for another, and they often confuse him for other people), but he
obsessively details every single feature
of his clothes, stereo, workout routine, and business card. He is engaged to an equally rich, shallow woman named Evelyn. They can't stand each other, but they stay together for the sake of their social lives. He has a mistress on the side (the fiancée of a colleague he hates) and has regular liaisons with prostitutes and women he encounters at clubs, many of whom end up being his victims.
The one woman (and possibly the one person) in his life he has anything approaching feelings for is his secretary, Jean. He just cannot bring himself to seduce, rape or kill her, perhaps because she is the only person in his life who is not completely shallow. Every time he mentions Jean throughout the novel, he casually acknowledges her as "Jean, my secretary who is in love with me" and, upon our first introduction to Jean, she is someone he "will probably end up married to someday".
While on the surface, Bateman seems to be the embodiment of the suave, attractive and successful businessman, he appears to loathe himself as much as he does everyone else; he kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate, usually by having better taste than he does (Paul Owen's superior reservation skills, business card and handling of the prestigious Fisher account, for example). His friends mock him as the "boy next door," his own lawyer refers to him as a "bloody ass-kisser...a brown-nose goody-goody," and he is often dismissed as "yuppie trash" by people outside of his social circle.
Bateman often expresses doubts regarding his own sanity, and he has periodic attacks of psychosis, during which he hallucinates. He often experiences feelings of depersonalization. In his own words, "...though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I am simply not there." Although Bateman often claims that he is devoid of emotion, he also describes experiencing moments or periods of extreme rage, panic or grief, often over trivial inconveniences such as not being able to get a good table at a restaurant. In the middle of killing and dismembering a victim, he breaks down, sobbing that he "just wants to be loved" (although the sincerity of this admission is extremely questionable).
Bateman compensates for these inabilities and insecurities through obsessive vanity and personal grooming, with unwavering attention to detail. He dresses in the most fashionable, expensive clothing possible (e.g. Valentino suits, Oliver Peoples glasses and Jean Paul Gaultier overnight bags) as a means of affecting some "control" over his otherwise chaotic life. Likewise, he categorizes people by what they wear and how they look because they are more easily "understood" in terms of labels and stereotypes. Bateman's apartment also is firmly controlled in terms of look and taste, with the latest music, food, and paintings. People as three-dimensional beings are unpredictable and impossible to understand, but people in terms of attire and appearance are much more easy for Bateman to grasp.
Publicly, Bateman presents the façade of a sensitive and caring liberal. He expresses a stereotypically left-wing concern for issues such as AIDS, environmentalism, education, racism, sexism, pollution, abortion, immigration, materialism (as ironic as that may be), and the economy. However, Bateman is actually a virulent sexist, racist, classist, elitist, militarist, fascist, conformist, chauvinist, misogynist, masochist, sadist, extremist and homophobic necrophiliac, abusing his girlfriends, gays (though he enjoys seeing his female partners engage in lesbian sex), minorities, and the homeless even when not actually torturing or killing them. He also deliberately invests in companies with racist policies while contributing to the legal defense of Robert Chambers.
Bateman does not fit the "typical" profile of a serial killer, as he kills more or less indiscriminately, with no preferred type of victim and no consistent or preferred method of killing. Throughout the novel, he kills men, women, a child, and animals. He kills women mostly for sadistic sexual pleasure, often during or just after sex, and is also a prolific rapist. He kills men because they anger or annoy him, and the child just to see if he would enjoy it (which he doesn't).
Periodically, he matter-of-factly confesses his crimes to his friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers ("I like to dissect girls do you know I'm utterly insane?") just to see if they are actually listening to him. They either are not, or think he is joking. In the climactic scene, he calls his lawyer and leaves a lengthy, detailed message confessing all of his crimes. He later runs into his lawyer, who mistakes him for someone else. Bateman is never arrested for the enormous number of murders he commits.
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