American Psycho Brett Easton Ellis: Summary
American Psycho Push
Book Summary and Comment
Ignacio Sánchez Pastor Magisterio Lengua Extranjera 2º
American Psycho Brett Easton Ellis
Summary
Set in Manhattan, American Psycho spans two and one half years in the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, 26 years old when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite to his forays into murder by nightfall. Bateman comes from a privileged background, and he works as a vice president at a Wall Street investment company, and he embodies the 1980s yuppie culture. The first part of the book contains no violence (except for subtle references apparent only in retrospect), and is simply an account of what …show more content…
Reagan’s dream dashes through the United States, riding a rising financial growth curve. These are times for Wall Street profits and stock market warriors. Yuppies are the new high class, bold and merciless. Amidst this background, Easton Ellis sets a novel that, through a brutal exaggeration, depicts the terrible pit of empty materialism those times hid underneath. Far from Tom Wolfe’s funny “The Bonfire of Vanities” or Oliver Stone’s self-righteous “Wall Street” (which share the social landscape of this novel), “American Psycho” describes, through the mind of a psychopath, the rules that govern society at the time: success, material belongings, pleasure and looks are the only things that matter, there’s no room for conscience or feelings. The stream-of-thought narrative Ellis uses is a bit hard to follow at first, but it is very successful at showing the reader a psychological portrait of the protagonist: an empty human being. Completely focused in appearance (the novel is packed with descriptions that summarise people into a list of brands they wear), the character can’t seem to recognise most people around, having a hard time with faces, but can identify all their belongings, the only thing that matters to him. The novel, thus, portrays the mind of Bateman, and showing everybody around him is the same, he sets the real point underlying the novel: the only difference between him and the rest of the characters is that he commits murders, but they all share
Book Summary and Comment
Ignacio Sánchez Pastor Magisterio Lengua Extranjera 2º
American Psycho Brett Easton Ellis
Summary
Set in Manhattan, American Psycho spans two and one half years in the life of wealthy young investment banker Patrick Bateman. Bateman, 26 years old when the story begins, narrates his everyday activities, from his recreational life among the Wall Street elite to his forays into murder by nightfall. Bateman comes from a privileged background, and he works as a vice president at a Wall Street investment company, and he embodies the 1980s yuppie culture. The first part of the book contains no violence (except for subtle references apparent only in retrospect), and is simply an account of what …show more content…
Reagan’s dream dashes through the United States, riding a rising financial growth curve. These are times for Wall Street profits and stock market warriors. Yuppies are the new high class, bold and merciless. Amidst this background, Easton Ellis sets a novel that, through a brutal exaggeration, depicts the terrible pit of empty materialism those times hid underneath. Far from Tom Wolfe’s funny “The Bonfire of Vanities” or Oliver Stone’s self-righteous “Wall Street” (which share the social landscape of this novel), “American Psycho” describes, through the mind of a psychopath, the rules that govern society at the time: success, material belongings, pleasure and looks are the only things that matter, there’s no room for conscience or feelings. The stream-of-thought narrative Ellis uses is a bit hard to follow at first, but it is very successful at showing the reader a psychological portrait of the protagonist: an empty human being. Completely focused in appearance (the novel is packed with descriptions that summarise people into a list of brands they wear), the character can’t seem to recognise most people around, having a hard time with faces, but can identify all their belongings, the only thing that matters to him. The novel, thus, portrays the mind of Bateman, and showing everybody around him is the same, he sets the real point underlying the novel: the only difference between him and the rest of the characters is that he commits murders, but they all share