Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in American Psycho, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Materialism and Consumption
Identity and Isolation
Monotony and Desensitization
Vice and Violence
The Truth
Summary
Analysis
Bateman is standing in his apartment, on the phone with his lawyer while splitting his focus between the maid cleaning the blood off his walls and an episode of “The Patty Winters Show,” where Patty is asking a young child about orgies. Bateman tells the reader that this has been a bad week; he’s started drinking his own urine, sleeping on the floor, and flossing his teeth until his mouth bleeds. For Valentine’s Day, he sent the heart of a girl he killed to her mother, Evelyn a box of flies with a note telling her she’s fat and he never wants to see her again, and for Jean, a number of expensive, beautiful gifts delivered to her home.
The topic of this episode of “The Patty Winters Show” is one of the strangest yet, so it’s probably unlikely that Bateman’s actually watching a maid he hired clean the blood off his walls, too. That being said, the disgusting and grotesque new habits he describes aren’t too unrealistic based on the other things he’s told us he’s done. Even his Valentine presents seem pretty typical—except for, of course, his presents to Jean; could he still be trying to connect with her? Or is he apologizing for his inability to connect and be with her in the way she wants?
Themes
At the office, Bateman listens to Madonna, arranges an interview with a nagging reporter, and reads an article about dead bodies being discovered on a yacht and a serial killer going around poisoning bottles of Evian water. Price drops by to see him. It’s been a while, but Price assures him that he’s now “back.” Bateman catches him up on things: he dumped Evelyn, and Courtney married Luis (though Price mistakes which “Luis”). Price is now working for a different firm, and wishes his friend well as he heads out. Bateman wonders for a moment what it’s like to be inside the world of Tim Price.
Bateman’s new musical obsession is clearly Madonna, who was an icon of the 1980s. The report that he reads about poisoned Evian water sounds strikingly like something he would do—maybe he did and didn’t tell us, or maybe he’s been making up stories based on crimes he reads about in magazines this entire time. Price’s return (we never knew he went anywhere) seems like it might be from a rehabilitation facility, which would make sense given his drug use. Bateman wonders what it would be like to be him: someone with similar vices, but who is able to keep control of them, and, perhaps, seek help for them.
Themes
