American Psycho

The extract from the novel takes place on Manhattan, where we enter the incoherent flow of thoughts of a young, well-dressed man. We follow him on his route of daily errands, and he enters the Central Park zoo, where he uses the urinal without flushing. This particular act upsets a black custodian who gives him a reprimand only to be called nigger and flashed with his knife. The narrator continues on his path, where he shares even more of his viewpoints on his fellow human beings. He also shares an undefinable moment with an owl, which triggers his rage and homicidal compulsion to grow. He ends up crouching behind a trashcan, where a young boy approaches with the innocuous intention to throw out a candy wrapper. The narrator asks the boy if he wants a cookie right before he stabs him in the neck. He quickly leaves the crime scene, but shortly after returns saying he is a doctor. It all ends with the narrator leaving the Central Park zoo, where he buys an ice cream bar, uncaught.

Patrick Bateman is an example of the materialistic, career minded young people in the 80’s called yuppies. They mainly lived in New York and other big cities, where they could engage in highbrow culture, buy expensive clothes and dine at fancy cafés and restaurants. The narrator confirms that he is a yuppie, for instance by telling the reader that he eats a gourmet lunch, while wearing expensive designer apparel: “I’m wearing faded jeans, an Armani jacket, and a white, hundred-and-forty-dollar Comme des Garcons T-shirt”(page 32, line 6). Here, we find out that he has a taste for the finer things, and he even informs us about the price of one of his pieces, which is a sign of our narrator’s self-presentational behaviour. His jeans are faded, and that may also have something to do with his frame of mind, as he also in the beginning of the text says he can not sleep during