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Does Patrick Bateman actually kill anybody
This is a deeply unpleasant, but truly profound book, a comment on 80s vacuity. (if a profound comment on vacuity isn't an oxymoron) The question I had at the end is does Bateman actually kill anyone ? My conclusion was no. My reason ? The constant repetition about returning the videos.
Peter Harris about 1 year ago
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total agree that he does not kill anyone as the people who he has said he has killed also have been spotted after they are supposedly killed. It is all in his wierd and twisted mind. But doesn't mean that he is not a total psychopath
William Adams about 1 year agoInteresting premise. I might have to read it again now...
Anonymous User about 1 year agoNope. It's all in his head.
Facebook User about 1 year agoOkay, here's a lone dissenting vote that yes, he did kill them. Or that the statement of the novel is that his consumerist lifestyle is so destructive and dehumanizing that he might as well be murdering people.
Facebook-användare about 1 year agoCould you clarify what you mean by returning video tapes = not killing people?
I agree that Bateman is delusional. His accounts of his sexual life seem like exaggerated fantasies where he recounts the pornography he has watched. But he is clearly violently delusional, and people who are violently delusional are quite capable of murder. I think we can agree there.
Most people I know who say he killed nobody point to the scene at the end where is psychologist claims to have just had lunch with someone Bateman claims to have killed, which would, it might seem, suggest that the guy is still alive and Batemen was only fantasizing. But mistaken identity is a constant theme of the novel. People are always mistaking Bateman for someone else, and calling people by the wrong names. As I read that scene I thought it an eerie continuation of that: Bateman's victim will not be missed, because no one knows him well enough to notice that he's missing.
More supportive of my conclusion is the scene where Bateman returns to an apartment where he killed the owner and a couple of prostitutes, intending to cover up the crime. But his work has already been done for him: the apartment newly painted, cleaned, and being shown off to prospective new tenants. The realtor soon finds him suspicious, confused and sporting clean-up gear, and says "You better leave."
I think that there is evidence in the book to suggest that he may actually kill some people, but only believes that he kills others. For example, as someone mentioned; at one point he actually finds himself running from the police and narrowly escapes them; at another, he is abducted by a taxi driver who takes him to the docks (if I remember rightly) and outright accuses him of murdering another taxi driver, which we hear him describe earlier in the book. This suggests that he must have killed someone because he is being hunted.
In the case when Patrick tries to confess what he has done to the other character, who then claims that it's impossible because he had just seen Patrick's victim, I think this is entirely up to the reader to decide: does the character simply not realise who is being talked about (he thinks Patrick is someone else throughtout the book); or has Patrick just imagined the whole thing?
Cameron Kennedy about 1 year agoIt is such a recurring theme that I just got the feeling that Ellis was saying that it is all Bateman fantasising about what he has seen on the videos
Peter Harris about 1 year agoThat's a good observation. Bateman's media-saturated life is definitely one of Ellis' big satirical points. So... being a huge fantasist, what he watches on TV and hears on the radio is all but the totality of his experience.
Facebook-användare about 1 year agoI think that's a valid reading of the novel, but I do think the question of whether what's on the page is real is supposed to have no definite answer.
I think a good example of when you can tell it is probably in his mind is when he runs into his ex-girlfriend and invites her to his apartment. This might be the most brutal scene in the book, and the extent to which he tortures and mutilates her seems more like a peek into his fantasies than an actual occurrence. The only scene I can remember that made me actually believe he had killed someone was the run-in with the cab driver. The whole thing with Paul Allen or whoever he gets drunk and hacks away always threw me off though... On a different note.. I always found it kind of crazy that the book can be so horrifying and also so funny in the same paragraph/page/sequence. I guess that's part of the story's appeal.
Webb Henderson about 1 year agoNope and that is why he is the American Psycho.
Soumiah Fattouh about 1 year agoKevin, the apt./realtor scene is the most disturbing scene (in the movie!) because it implies that somebody CLEANED UP THE BODIES, etc., to ready the apt. for viewing. Therefore, the apt. sale is more important than (1) the victim's lives and (2), the more disturbing idea that several unknown people participated in the cover-up. I have never forgotten the look on Christian Bale's face in that scene...the killer actually "suspicious, confused," as you say.
Cheers. BTW, do you have a business card?
Dean R. Vincent about 1 year agoIt's completely ambiguous, and that, of course, is the point. He lives in a sick fantasy. The society he and his kind have created is a sick fantasy. What is true and what is not true is of no relevance. The truth will not redeem him. It is not an exit.
Ronnie Bitten about 1 year agoyou can't trust anything in this book as evidence. Pat Bateman is the narrator and is clearly insane, whether to the point of brutal murder or not, it doesn't matter. Everything in this book is how he sees things and his perception of reality cannot be trusted.
Josh Kidd about 1 year agoThe movie is a surprisingly solid adaptation. The realtor saying "Don't come back" is the most chilling line imaginable.
Facebook-användare about 1 year agoOh, and: My business card is a subtle eggshell with helvetica neue font. I think it makes an impression.
He's nothing more than a morbid 'Walter Mitty'. He's killed nobody, merely fantasizing about it throughout the story.
Ian-Patrick McAllister about 1 year agoHmmmm good point.... I guess it could be an option, cos the final is quite open. the only comparisson point i can find now in my head is the Fight Clu, but then we all got it visual rather than in a book, so it was already digested and AP film was, well, crap....
Facebook-användare about 1 year agoI think i may read it again....
This has long been a topic that I have discussed with friends who have both read the book and seen the movie.
John J. Lauro about 1 year agoI believe that the book is a fantasic observation of 1980's consumer culture. Where being seen is more important then who you are. This is illustrated in the fact that the people who he is conversing with, don't even seem to know who he is as they are speaking to them.
The fact that people he supposedly kills , are still functioning , to me says that all the killing in the book is the product of his dillusional mind.
Bateman however, Is deeply disturbed and that is not a fantasy, he does at least in his own mind belive himself to be a serial murderer and he does not feel any remorse in that. He is a sociopath, just not an active one. He is nameless, faceless and souless, very much like his victims. It is the perfect memior of the cocaine riddled greed is good reagonaomic era of the 1980's manhatten finacial elite. While the book goes into great detail to explore his murderous personality, There is no actual blood on Patrick Batemans hands.
For an interesting take on this topic, read 'Why does Patrick Bateman wear two ties?', a short essay by John Sutherland in his book 'Where was Rebecca shot? Puzzles, curiosities and conundrums in modern fiction'
Sutherland argues, persuasively, that the whole narrative is a hallucinatory fiction. The rest of the book (Sutherland's, that is) is quite good, in a diverting sort of way...
Facebook-användare about 1 year agoOf course he killed the people. The whole point of the book was to show the reader how little society cares about what goes on around them. There is a psychotic murderer, confessing, begging to be caught, and all anyone cares about is where they're going to dinner.
If he didn't commit the murders, the book wouldn't have the power it does, nor the meaning. Patrick Bateman would be just some guy that fanaticizes about killing.
Amber Anderson about 1 year agoI absolutely agree with you.
Amber Anderson about 1 year ago