Compare and Contrast American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro focussing on the topic of the unreliable narrator

The unreliable narrator is a technique used by authors where a scenario is created in which the reader cannot trust the narration of the book usually done in the first person. In American psycho, Ellis explores the sinister nature of Wall Street yuppie culture by examining the sanity of the narrating protagonist Patrick Bateman using the unreliable narrator. Ishiguro also uses this, exploring ideas of regret and also self-justification in the character of Mr Stevens in The Remains of the Day. Unlike Ellis who examines Bateman during his early working years, in his mid-twenties and presenting a snapshot of his life, Ishiguro uses his take on the unreliable narrator to look at Stevens towards the end of his life using a series of flashbacks narrated unreliably, by Stevens. Both novels are comparable in the sense they examine the topic of failure using unreliable narrators that will do anything to escape the idea that they are failures.

A popular debate regarding American Psycho is whether Patrick Bateman is a murderer or not, certainly Bateman describes in detail of murders he commits and why he commits them, however, certain factors bring Bateman’s reliability of narration into question. Bruno Zerweck argues that due to the lack of ‘detective framework’ and ‘unintentional self-incrimination’ the narration of the novel is reliable. Jennifer Phillips in her article on the subject disagrees citing examples such as Detective Donald Kimball as evidence of so called ‘detective framework. Even within the film, which takes a ‘reliable’ Bateman stance, Kimball questions the reliability of the character of Bateman: the actor Willem Dafoe was instructed to portray the character in three different ways: he thought Bateman was guilty; he thought Bateman was innocent; he was unsure of Bateman’s innocence. The different portrayals were cut up into the film, giving a largely mixed message regarding Kimball’s opinion of Bateman’s reliability as a character and his innocence regarding the disappearance of Paul Allen (Paul Owen in the novel), it is difficult for the observing audience to come to any different conclusion other than that Bateman is guilty after having witnessed Bateman wedge and axe through Allen’s (Owen’s) head to the tune of ‘Hip to be square’. Bateman’s unreliability can be seen throughout the book and Ellis uses this unreliability to create a dark satire on the society Bateman represents, done through heavy emphasis on materialism, class conflict and boredom as well as a fear of failure contrasted with descriptive violence against an external class of people.

Bateman’s unreliability is seen in contradictions between what Patrick says he does and what is happening around him. Bateman uses shocking language in certain scenarios with no reaction or acknowledgement of what he says for example he says to a lady serving drinks, ‘you are a fucking ugly bitch I want to stab to death and play around with your blood’ a sadistic comment that seemingly goes unnoticed. When he says to Daisy: ‘I beat the living shit out of her…She was too ugly to rape’ there is no response other than continuation of conversation as normal despite the shocking statement that had just been made. Frequently this happens, as Bateman tells people in normal conversation that he is psychopath, he talks about the need to engage in homicidal behaviour, and mentions how he likes to dissect girls but the comments go seemingly unnoticed, such evidence implies that Bateman is not actually saying the things he says he is. In some circumstances Bateman’s remarks are heard but are interpreted as jokes, such as his Attorney whose opinion of Bateman is of a ‘brown nosing goody-goody’. As such Bateman can be argued to have adopted a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ persona in which his social image contrasts significantly from his psychopathic persona: ‘Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil’. In contrast to Jekyll and Hyde, Bateman is shown to have control over both personas. Jennifer Phillips describes this relationship between Bateman’s personas as his ‘mask of sanity’ he wears to cover his ‘growing dementia’.

In comparison the technique of the unreliable narrator is used in The Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro is no stranger to use of the technique and indeed in his novel: An Artist of the Floating World, the protagonist, Ono, a painter, says: ‘I cannot recall any colleague who could paint a self-portrait with absolute honesty’. Zuzana Fonikova indicates that this inability to paint a picture of oneself honestly comes from a personal desire to ‘hide the disgraceful facts and emphasise the positive traits’, which is where the source of Stevens’ unreliability in recalling events stems, what he did not see as ‘disgraceful’ by his own standards then, he consciously or subconsciously supresses: ‘It is possible this is a case of hindsight colouring my memory’. In a different way to American psycho, in which the reader is an observing witness to Patrick Bateman’s life and narrative, The Remains of the Day presents a series of flashbacks narrated by an elderly protagonist looking back on his life, linking both novels is the idea of preservation of image, Bateman’s; an image desperately trying to keep up culturally and socially while Stevens; an image of dignity.

‘Dignity’ is frequently referenced throughout the novel, certainly in both in Stevens’ present and past. The idea of dignity is used extensively as a form of justification for Stevens’ acts of servitude. The idea of dignity is mentioned by Stevens as being the most important attribute a butler can have, and Ishiguro introduces Stevens’ use of somewhat humorous anecdotes to outline this idea such as the story of a butler in India who shot a tiger that had gotten into the dining room before calmly telling his employer that ‘there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time’. However Stevens’ definition of the word and his so called ‘dignified’ behaviour appears seemingly alien to what one usually associates with dignity adopting a whole new meaning of suppression of one’s emotions and extreme repression of any form of opinion, Foniokova refers to this as ‘blind loyalty to the employer’. Such cases of ‘blind loyalty’ can be seen in the incident in which Stevens is instructed to dismiss two maids because they are Jewish. Stevens downplays these anti-Semitic incidents (Stevens even objects to the use of the term ‘incidents’ due to the fact they were ‘extremely minor’) as well as the issue of Lord Darlington’s involvement with the Nazi party and the British Union of Fascists labelling them as ‘absurd allegations’ and that ‘quite ludicrously, they originate from that brief, entirely insignificant few weeks’. When Stevens is asked to dismiss the maids, he only finds fault on a professional level since the girls have always been of good service however he expresses how there ‘was nothing to be gained’ in displaying such doubts and that the task ‘demanded to be carried out with dignity’, or in the eyes of the reader, morally wrong blind loyalty and an actual lack of dignity.

On three occasions Stevens denies his former employment under Lord Darlington. This is a clear discrepancy from his narration in which he so eagerly defends Darlington and very clearly characterises him as a ‘Gentleman’. This lack of acknowledgement of working for Lord Darlington is evidence of unreliable narration since it brings the explicit, that Darlington was a good man, and the implicit, that one would be embarrassed about working for Darlington, into conflict: ‘you mean you actually used to work for that Lord Darlington…oh no, I am employed by Mr John Farraday’ Stevens does this out of his misguided sense of dignity perhaps or embarrassment and inability to face the fact that he worked for someone widely considered to be a fascist. The fact that Darlington is described as ‘that Lord Darlington’ by the local implies there is some form of contempt for him and as such Stevens denies employment under him and instead refers to his employment under John Farraday. When the opportunity arises to acknowledge and justify his employment by Lord Darlington, Stevens avoids it. In another circumstance Stevens finds himself being treated as if he himself were a gentleman in another village, but he does not correct them. This is comparable to the situation Bateman finds himself in in which Paul Owen mistakes him for Marcus Halberstam, and like Stevens, instead of correcting the misidentification, both Stevens and Bateman play along in order for social convenience, to not create an awkward situation. Mike Petry writes: ‘Ishiguro…often reveals his narrators’ attempt to hide, by having them stumble over their own contradictions and inconsistencies’, Stevens stumbles in this case over his lie about his status as a gentleman and he is picked up on this by the Doctor, this parallels the lie Stevens has created for himself in which he has not wasted his life however he stumbles through discrepancies and unreliable narration and is picked up on his lie by the reader. Likewise in American Psycho, Bateman ends up stumbling over the lie he has crafted in assuming the identity of Halberstam as seen by the character of Detective Donald Kimball investigating the disappearance of Paul Owen whom Bateman was meeting under the identity of Halberstam. Halberstam’s own alibi for the murder, which also accounted for Bateman Owen’s apparent survival (as he had lunch with Bateman’s attorney) all show visible cracks within Bateman’s narration of events and point towards evidence of the unreliable narrator similarly to Stevens.

In American Psycho, evidence of unreliable narration does not necessarily mean that Bateman is completely innocent, without a doubt violence and murder play a huge role in the novel whether imaginary or not. Violence is used by Ellis to envision, through Bateman’s psyche, a form of urban class war in which ultra-consumerist, materialist, chauvinistic, racist and homophobic values dominate. In Bateman’s own way he wages war against all that offend his way of life, whether this be in his head or not. It allows Bateman the opportunity to strike out at those who offend his nature, a means by which he can wage the class war mentioned earlier. Phillips describes how Bateman ‘others’ those he kills: Homosexuals, Prostitutes, urban poor.

Unreliability within The Remains of the Day takes a different stance in which Stevens does not lie outright to the reader as Bateman does, but instead Stevens’ narrative seeks to justify his own actions and the actions of lord Darlington, and he uses ‘dignity’ in order to do so, constantly justifying decisions he makes by attributing them to his professionalism, nothing else. Stevens desperately tries to present a reality in which he has lead a good life of servitude to a great man and through this, is fulfilled. One can compare this idealistic perspective of reality to Zeno’s Conscience, written as a series of memoirs, in which the narrator unintentionally distorts facts to justify his actions. It is the simple Freudian theory that human nature prevents one from telling the absolute truth when such truths may shed bad light on oneself, for example he refers to ‘secondary revision’ of dreams in which the dreamer alters the presentation of the dream in order to achieve an acceptable meaning for the dream.

One possible conclusion for Bateman’s unreliable narration is that it comes from a desire to be something more than what he currently is. The implication of this is that Bateman has created a fantasy in which he is something more than just a Wall Street cokehead. This is done in order to supress his own boredom and provide an escape from the repetitive life that he leads as a yuppie in which he is preoccupied with meaningless sex, the same fashion, the same restaurants conversation that never really leads to anything, work, which he never seems to do, returning videotapes, going to the gym, taking care of his body: an existence, which to Bateman never really seems to amount to anything at all: ‘there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me..’. In essence Bateman does it because he is bored and cannot stand the mediocrity of his own life despite belonging to the elite in society; Bateman needs something more. The idea of ‘escaping’ his reality is used by Ellis effectively who dedicates a significant part of the novel towards meaningless lists of clothing brands, electronic gadgets and music, with whole mind-numbingly boring chapters devoted to single artists that just as Patrick Bateman uses violence to escape, the periods of violence allow the reader to escape the bore of Bateman’s life that is so well conveyed. Julian Murphet writes: ‘If Ellis wants to bore us he must have a reason’.

However there is something more to the unreliability of narration in both books, it is not a case of simple boredom or a desire to hide misdeeds of the past, what links both protagonists in their use of the unreliable narrator is the threat of failure, the fear that there is nothing more to life. Bateman’s world is haunted by failure, social failure, cultural failure, failure at work. Bateman uses his fantastical persona not only to escape the hopeless realisation that his life is a failure but also to lash out at it: Bateman ‘kills’ Bethany, a member of Bateman’s society because she points out social and cultural failures in Bateman for example her boyfriend is a chef at the exclusive restaurant Dorsia’s yet he can never seem to get a table there and also she points out that Bateman’s David Onica painting is hung upside down. Unable to live with the fact that Bethany has ‘one-upped’ him, he resolves to the conclusion that she must die, while she lives, she remains a living representation of Bateman’s failure. Bateman fails to handle the elusive ‘fisher’ account, and so concludes that Paul Owen, who not only handles the account but also pointed out Bateman’s failure to assert himself socially by simply mistaking him (for Marcus Halberstam), must also die. Bateman’s paranoid fear of failure is so significant that he will do just about anything to escape thinking about the disappointments in his own life, whether it be murder or occupying himself with Electronics, Music, Fashion. Stevens, like Bateman, does what he can in order to convince himself that his life is not a failure. Foniokova refers to the fact that it is ‘the knowledge of the consequences of his master’s activities [that] discloses the uselessness of the butler’s life’ which is why Stevens establishes this idea of dignity as some form of defence mechanism in order to give ‘his past life a meaning’. The last page of the books sees Stevens say regarding his attempt to banter: ‘I suppose I was something of a sorry disappointment’, here Stevens not only refers to his banter but it also acts as an analogy of his own life with ‘banter’ representing compassion and meaningfulness: ‘in bantering lies the key to human warmth’. Effectively Stevens uses his failure at ‘banter’ to demonstrate that his life was a failure as he himself failed to achieve human warmth however he is not content to say this outright, and so hides behind the banter analogy.

In conclusion Bateman and Stevens both hide from reality using unreliable narration, a reality they fear and will do anything to escape it or even combat it. Bateman hides behind his ‘mask of sanity’ however he conceals a dark fantasy in which he murders all those he sees as a threat to his own ego, whether they threaten the section of society he represents through their very existence such as the homeless or if they pose a threat personally to Bateman’s own masculine egoistic personality, Bateman will do what he sees necessary to supress any reminder of his failure. Freud said: ‘The madman is a dreamer awake’ however Patrick Bateman is a madman asleep, engulfed in his own fantasy. Stevens desperately hides from the notion that his whole life of servitude had been a waste, and as such he will fail to accurately report his own actions and the actions of his employer during his time in the service of Lord Darlington, in order to convince himself that his own life has not been a failure. Stevens takes comfort in the fact that he did what he did in the name of professionalism and dignity and warps the definitions of these terms in order to manufacture some form of meaning and success in his life.

Bibliography

Zerweck, Bruno. Historicising unreliable narration: Unreliability and cultural discourse in narrative fiction (2001)

Phillips, Jennifer. Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Pscyho: interaction between narrative from and thematic content (2009)

Easton Ellis, Bret. American Psycho (London: Pan Macmillan, 2006.)

Louis Stevenson, Robert. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Longmans, Green & Co, 1886.)

Ishiguro, Kazuo, An Artist of the Floating World (Faber and Faber, 1986.)

Fonikova, Zuzana, The Butler’s suspicious Dignity: Unreliable narration in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (2006)

Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day (Faber and Faber, 1989)

Petry, Mike, ‘Narratives of Personal Pasts’:Kazuo Ishiguro in the Context of Postmodern British Fiction (1999)

Svevo, Italo, Zeno’s Conscience (1923.)

Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams (Macmillan, 1913.)

Murphet, Julian, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (Continuum contermporaries, 2002.)

Harron, Mary, American Psycho Film (Lions Gate Films, 2000.)

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[ 2 ]. Phillips, Jennifer. Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Pscyho: interaction between narrative from and thematic content (2009)
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[ 4 ]. Easton Ellis, American Psycho, p. 57
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[ 7 ]. Easton Ellis, American Psycho, p.
[ 8 ]. Easton Ellis, American Psycho, p.
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[ 13 ]. Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day (Faber and Faber, 1989) p.
[ 14 ]. Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day p.
[ 15 ]. Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day p.
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