"Mature Content Warning!"
This article contains some content involving a mature subject or situation and may not be suitable for younger viewers. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page.
“
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.
„
~ Patrick's infamous monologue in the film.
“
I have all the characteristics of a human being: flesh, blood, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.
„
~ Patrick Bateman describing the decline of his sanity.
“
Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I'm suddenly jolted with a mournful despair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child's life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. 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. I'm automatically seized with an almost overwhelming desire to knife the boy's mother too, who is in hysterics, but all I can do is slap her face harshly and shout for her to calm down.
„
~ Patrick Bateman's thoughts while murdering a small child in front of his grieving mother.
Patrick is a wealthy, materialistic Wall Street investment banker who moonlights as one of the most vicious and sadistic serial killers in fiction, as his tortures and defilements of women are described in graphic detail and may span almost entire chapters; he is also cannibalistic, necrophilic, and habitually cruel to animals.
His depraved nature notwithstanding, he embodies the worst aspects of capitalism and nearly every stereotype of 1980s yuppies through his greed, superficiality (from which he ironically accuses everyone else in his environment of suffering), and conspicuous consumption as he obsessively details virtually every feature of his (and others') designer clothes, daily routines, home possessions, and so forth throughout the novel. In addition to this, he occasionally goes off on lengthy, hollow, or even plagiarized tangents regarding subjects such as politics and popular music (the latter seemingly to himself as memorization)—most likely in an attempt to conform or to impress his peers via this contrived veneer of sophistication and contemporaneity.
As he seeks to in some way escape the mundanity of both of the lives he leads while striving to "fit in," his sanity deteriorates and his violence intensifies, while his even shallower peers and even his fiancé strangely either overlook or outright disregard his psychopathic tendencies and the obvious hints thereof, suggesting that they are as apathetic and devoid of empathy as he is. Furthermore, he is virulently racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic, but he harbors bitter, violent malice towards seemingly all living things nevertheless. A nihilistic capitalist to the extreme, his consumption of invaluable life is no different from that of products.
Although he is admittedly insane, Patrick is fully aware of his actions and knows that what he does is wrong, but still continues doing so, showing he still has a functioning moral agency.
While he has plenty of comedic moments throughout the story, they're typically played for black comedy and do not at all detract from his heinousness—e.g., his completely arbitrary and oftentimes grotesque insults or threats towards those he is talking to that go unnoticed, his tendency to blurt out blatant racial/sexual slurs (especially when angered), or him ecstatically running up and down Broadway while stuffing his mouth with cereal and "screeching like a banshee" immediately after brutally murdering an innocent elderly man and his dog. His psychotic delusions are also ridiculous but are out of his control and only serve to emphasize the character's disturbed nature.
He also has two moments that may resemble genuine altruism in the novel, which are his handing of a $100 bill to a college girl whom he had mistaken for a vagrant and his letting one of the dates go instead of harming her, respectively; however, seeing as this is a man who constantly dehumanizes women and wishes his pain upon everyone around him, the former was done only due to him finding the girl attractive (and possibly in an attempt to feel a positive emotion rather than for her own sake), with the latter seemingly out of concern for his own mental decline as a result of his severely deviant behavior. If he simply had so much of an impulse to torture the date to death at that moment, he undoubtedly would've done so without hesitation.
And in the Film, he attempted to kill Jean with a nail gun but got interrupted by his fiancée Evelyn's voicemail for him. After that, he spares her on his own, even though she asked if he wanted her to stay or not. and doesn't kill her, but judging by his tone when he tells her to leave, it's clear he wanted to kill her but was angry that his kill was interrupted, which ruined the moment. Later, as well as the fact that the nail gun is not functioning, at the end of the film, he even insults her with murderous rage, calling her a "dumb b*tch."
A possible factor in Patrick's evil is the dehumanization of both him and those around him in his apathetic and materialistic environment, which apparently causes him to consider humans as fungible as the countless products he consumes; however, this would not expiate nor even explain his absurd degrees of unwarranted brutality towards both other human beings and defenseless animals in the slightest, especially seeing as he chooses to remain in such a corrupt setting.
He murders someone (in the film, a woman who Patrick walked beside and talked to in the night) offscreen, as evidenced by the bloodstained sheets he takes to his dry cleaners, then threatens to kill a Chinese woman who works there for yipping at him.
He nonchalantly murders Paul Owen (Paul Allen in the film) by mangling his face with an axe, leaving him to die slowly within five minutes, and leaves his corpse in an abandoned building—presumably over a Fisher account, if not simply from impulse. In the film, Patrick does it out of spite and because Paul’s business card was better than his.
He attempts to strangle Luis Carruthers to death (even has the sadistic intent to boast his affair with Luis's girlfriend Courtney as he dies in the book), desisting only out of revulsion for Luis misinterpreting his assault as homosexual contact. In the book, he later pulls a knife on Luis to keep him away, and he also abuses and threatens him for his infatuation (such as by calling him a "fa**ot").
This perhaps goes to show that Patrick acts primarily on impulse; being an almost-textbook psychotic murderer, he may lose interest if his blood-lusting impulse is deadened for any reason.
Although he does breakdown after his rampage, this is more seen as him panicking after almost getting caught, especially since he regained his calmness afterwards.
Exclusive to the Novel[]
He has disturbing, murderous, or torturous thoughts and fantasies throughout the entire novel, even when not acting upon them, and oftentimes persecutes, bullies, or abuses black men, gay men, Jews, women, vagrants, or other such groups—usually with slurs and condescension, or even petty acts such as dangling a dollar in front of a vagrant's face only to retract it.
It may be worth noting, however, that such prejudiced and classist acts are common within his circle—yet none of his fellow yuppies go as far as to lull them with pep talks before doing so, let alone mutilate or murder them. Furthermore, while said yuppies are overtly chauvinistic, Patrick goes greater lengths to feign concern for social justice and equity for the sake of his public image of modernity—perhaps also to appear more "with it" than his peers—yet ironically has committed the most grievous hate crimes (and has once screamed "F*ck yourself, you ret*rded c*cksucking k*ke" at a Jewish delicatessen manager despite the apparent offense he takes to anti-Semitic remarks), proving himself to be the most sycophantic of his group whereas the others are at least upfront in their beliefs.
According to him, when he was 14 years old, he raped one of his family's servants when he was in a chalet.
He possibly decapitates Evelyn's neighbor, outright telling a horrified Evelyn that the woman's head was in his freezer. She does not appear to notice this confession, however.
Immediately after giving a black beggar a (rather backhanded and abusive) pep talk, he mutilates and blinds said beggar as well as breaking the front legs of his dog and spitefully tossing a quarter onto his mangled face while laughing at their pain—the reason for this senseless cruelty most likely being a simple sadistic impulse rather than prejudice.
When he re-encounters the same beggar and dog near the end of the novel, who are suffering more than ever (although the former holds a sign falsely claiming to be a Vietnam veteran for sympathy), Patrick simply looks down on them with disgust and deems them not worth his time.
He casually mentions having bought a small dog and torturing it to death not even a week later. Despite having no onscreen evidence of it, his future and past actions show that he would be completely capable of it.
He converses with an "old queer" about his Shar Pei, only to disembowel the dog, before stabbing its owner to death, and shooting at his face with a suppressed gun twice to ensure his death.
He invites the prostitutes Sabrina and Christie to his apartment, then he later harmed them in lewd methods. He most likely indeed did this, as they would then go see a doctor and a lawyer for whatever he did to them.
He slits the throat of a random Asian delivery boy who was passing by, simply because Patrick had erroneously heard that the Japanese had bought the Empire State Building and Nell's—only to find that his victim wasn't even Japanese; he was Chinese. Patrick only reacts to this with indifference.
While talking to a model, he claims to have beaten up a lost young girl who was asking people on the street for money (and allegedly also had a child) because "she was too ugly to rape." It is unknown if this actually happened.
He murders numerous women, usually by luring dates or prostitutes to his apartment, before inflicting the most brutal conceivable tortures and rapes upon them, which only worsen as the novel progresses. In addition to this, he cannibalizes some of his victims and sexually violates or mutilates their corpses.
In fact, the way he tortures his victims are so brutal, they don't need to be described here.
He drowns a puppy he had bought Evelyn before wrapping it in one of her sweaters and throwing it into their freezer, for no apparent reason.
Around that time, he claims to find himself standing over his and Evelyn's bed in the hours before dawn with an icepick gripped in his fist as she sleeps, waiting for Evelyn to open her eyes, implicating that he'd have no qualms with murdering her as well. He most likely doesn't, due to her wealth and status.
When at a zoo, upon seeing the plaque of the seal exhibit warn that coins may lodge in the animals' stomachs and cause ulcers, infections, and death, Patrick spitefully tosses a handful of change into the seals' tank—reasoning that the audience's enjoyment of them bothers him.
He stealthily stabs a five-year-old child in the throat at said zoo, then poses as a doctor when the bleeding and choking child's mother cries out for help, only to ensure her son's slow death via inaction. He does this simply to see whether he would enjoy it, disappointed due to his conclusion that doing so spreads less suffering and severs less connections than would the death of a person with a full history, who would have more to lose. In essence, child murder isn't evil enough for him.
The story makes it clear that he wanted to kill the boy's mother too, and he just didn't because, since he was in the middle of a crowd, he would call the attention of witnesses.
Upon trapping a giant rat he finds in his bathroom, he contemplates how he would torture girls with it; he eventually does so while murdering an unnamed prostitute.
he stomps the rat to death after using it to kill the girl's via eating from the inside, and finally cooks the girl's remains.
Eventually, his own bedroom is ridden with gore. He devours the remains of the girl (presumably that whom he tortured with the rat) as his sanity further deteriorates, reassuring himself that "this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing, is sh*t" once the iniquity of his behavior occurs to him.
He seemingly snaps and goes on a slaughter spree, beginning by shooting a street saxophonist in the face with a.357 Magnum. To flee from a squad car that happens to be present, he enters a cab and, frustrated, shoots the driver in the face as well when he's too terrified to drive and begs to be spared, hijacking the vehicle.
He crashes into a Korean delicatessen, injuring a cashier, then kills a policeman by shooting him in the face, and proceeds to shoot randomly at backup until he hits the gas tank of one of their cars and causes the vehicle to explode, killing several policemen. As he scrambles back home, he enters the wrong apartment, shooting the night watchman and then the janitor out of frustration.
He spends an entire chapter finally engaging in introspection during his date with Jean, showing awareness of his heartlessness and admitting his limitless malice, yet in spite of this, he does not decide to change in the slightest; he appears to discover the closest thing to an epiphany he ever has and simply ignores it, continuing to be a monster with total indifference.
He has given Jeanette a black eye and claims to have had five children aborted—two of whom he aborted himself.
He treats Evelyn and Jean, his own fiancé and secretary, respectively, horribly—despite seeing Jean as the only "real" person in his life; for instance, he once covers a urinal cake in chocolate and spitefully deceives Evelyn into eating it, then eventually coldly dumps her in public before FedExing her a box of flies with a note telling her to "[go] on a f*cking diet" (despite not really needing one), and gives Jean nothing much more than orders as one would to a servant while disregarding her feelings for him. Furthermore, he has an affair with Courtney, one of Evelyn's closest friends, in which he beats her on one occasion. This further proves that Patrick is incapable of (or unwilling to provide) affection.
While he does interact with his family in certain chapters, i.e., his brother Sean and his mother later on, this is not done of his own volition, and he only ever expresses either obvious hatred (particularly towards Sean) or indifference towards them therein.
Given that American Psycho is essentially a scathing commentary on '80s yuppie culture, he is likely written to be as violent as possible, both to denote his moral (and mental) degradation as a consequence of his gray, lifeless world and to spite said culture by depicting a fictitious member thereof to be as horrible as possible, while those he surrounds himself with are similarly indifferent and devoid of empathy.
It is even implicated that Paul Owen's murder is being covered up if Mrs. Wolfe's (his apartment's real estate agent's) ominous warning to Patrick is anything to go by: "Don't make any trouble." It could therefore be inferred from this that Harold Carnes, Patrick's attorney, who passes his confession off as a joke, could be in on it as well for the sake of PR—and if not that, Carnes's alleged dinners with Owen are just as likely to be the result of the former confusing another yuppie for him, which is a recurring mistake made by nearly every character. Patrick is defeated by his own wealth, position, and success, which he prides himself on, and the apathy of his world.
Furthermore, while there is minor ambiguity presented as to whether all of the depicted atrocities were actually committed and not mere figments of his psychotic episodes or otherwise unreliable narration, at least some of his crimes can be confirmed to have some basis in reality given their visible consequences—particularly his murders of Evelyn's neighbor (whom she notices has gone missing), Paul Owen (whose apartment keys Patrick couldn't have acquired if he were alive, plus the aforementioned points regarding Wolfe and Carnes), and the taxi driver whose friend confronts and mugs Patrick for said murder near the end of the novel; his mental deterioration is, if anything, both a red herring from these atrocities and a consequence of his self-imposed hell wherein, despite his actions, he is still not distinguished from his peers. In addition to this, his overwhelming number of negative traits and utter lack of redeeming qualities render him exceedingly qualified for this wiki.
Although American Psycho is undoubtedly an exploitation book, Patrick's actions are not Shock Value, as the author created American Psycho as a critique of Yuppie culture and to represent how he regretted ever having been one.
His actions were so harrowing that in the metafictional Lunar Park, a fictional Ellis grew disdainful of his own creation and killed off Bateman by writing him to die in a boat fire.
Exclusive to the Film[]
Despite claiming to want to help the poor as well as scolding his co-workers for making anti-Semitic remarks towards Paul Allen, Patrick, deep down, is a bigot.
Elitist: Killing a hobo and his dog for no reason after berating the man for being worthless and lazy.
Racist: Implied, as he calls Huey Lewis and the News too "black-sounding" for his taste.
Sexist: Butchering countless women and viewing them as objects.
Homophobic: Sparing Luis out of sheer disgust for his gay crush on Patrick himself.
Stabs a homeless man to death he saw in the street for being a 'loser' then kills his dog by stepping on it brutally. He had no reason to do it other than pure sadism and narcissism.
He picks up two prostitutes while trying to incriminate Paul Allen; he gives them his name, brings them to his apartment, and has sex with both of them while videotaping it. And later, he bruises them and makes them bleed by the time they were about to leave; even later, one of the girls remarks that.
Picks up a model, and she tells him that he thinks all models are dumb, which he lies to her about and says he doesn't. He then kills her offscreen, but it is shown that he plays with a piece of her hair while at work and also decapitates her and puts her head in a fridge.
Picks up one of the same two prostitutes, named Christie, calls up a lady friend of his named Elizabeth, and brings them to Paul Allen's apartment. He drugs their wine, gets them to make out, and has sex with them, abusing Elizabeth so badly during the act that she dies.
He ends up chasing Christie out into the hallway with a chainsaw and even tries to bite her leg while she makes it down the stairs ahead of him. Bateman drops the chainsaw over the edge, which hits her and kills her.
While running away from him, Christie discovers the bodies of the girls (probably prostitutes) hanging in the closet and Elizabeth's body dragged into the bathroom.
Shoots an old woman after nearly killing a stray cat.
Kills four police officers in a gunfight, after which he shoots a receptionist and a janitor while fleeing.
He admits that he killed at least forty people in total and even cannibalized some of them.
Jean finds his notebook of graphic drawings detailing all the people he's presumably brutalized during and possibly even before the film's events, indicating that at least some of his crimes actually happened.
✓
Pure Evils
