American Psycho Essay

The text is from the movie American Psycho, a movie released in 2000 based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. In the text we are hearing his inner monologue as he goes to confront the dry cleaners about the blood that was still on his sheets.
The simple sentence ‘’still covered with flecks of someone’s blood’’ uses verbs to describe his clothes. He tells us that he’s covered in blood which strongly suggests that he’s been involved in or has committed a murder. This starts off telling us that he is a murderous psychopath. The fact that he say’s ‘someone’s blood’ suggests that he didn’t know who it was that he’s just killed and therefore we see that he can’t have had much of a motive which further shows the intensity of his mental state.

The first person narrative voice which is used, ‘‘I look sharp but my stomach is doing flip-flops, my brain is churning’’, uses metaphors to emphasize his emotions and exaggerates how he feels rather than just saying ‘I feel unwell’. We can also link this to levels of formality because even though he’s talking to himself he would still have a certain way of addressing his own character. We see that he takes a more informal approach with the use of ‘my stomach is doing flip-flops’ because it is a less formal way of saying his stomach is turning. He uses phrases that he would use himself and not necessarily with other people because there won’t be many people, if anyone, that understands him better than himself.
The character uses an expletive in the interrogative to express his anger “If-you-don’t-shut-your-fucking-mouth-I-will-kill-you-are-you-understanding-me?’’. This phrase is an example of negative face threatening act because the Chinese woman is threatened with a command to make her feel intimidated. This reveals the characters impatient and dangerous nature when people aren’t cooperative with him when he wants them to be. The threat suggests that the character is not afraid or doesn’t hesitate to actually kill someone without a second thought.

The character uses field related jargon when he talks to himself’’ I have never firebombed anything and I start wondering how one goes about it—what materials are involved, gasoline, matches… or would it be lighter fluid?’’. The fact that he is talking to himself and using hyperbole suggests that this character is crazy because he is answering his own questions. The use of jargons ‘’gasoline’’, ‘’matches’’ etc. implies that the character has experience or knowledge with firebomb making. The intonation of the phrase makes it seem like this is a casual thought he has e.g. ‘’I wonder’’.