38 pages • 1 hour read
Bret Easton EllisAmerican Psycho
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Dry Cleaners”
Bateman goes to a Chinese drycleaner that returned some clothes to him “still covered with flecks of someone’s blood” (78). After stamping on the foot of a homeless person he argues with an elderly Chinese woman in the drycleaners whom he cannot understand. A woman who lives in his building enters the drycleaners. She talks to Bateman and notices the suspicious stains on his sheets which he tries to claim are from cranberry juice. She asks Bateman out for lunch, but he dismisses her with an excuse.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Harry’s”
Bateman and two other business associates are getting drinks in Harry’s. Bateman gets mistaken by a man called Paul Owen for another man, Marcus Halberstam, and is asked about Marcus’s girlfriend, Cecilia. They discuss women who “have a good personality” (87). The other men argue that this is unimportant and that only looks matter.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Deck Chairs”
A friend of Evelyn’s, Courtney, invites Bateman to a new restaurant near Columbia University called “Deck Chairs” along with another couple. When he gets there Bateman finds the couple to be dull and Courtney all but comatose from taking lithium. Despite this and passing out in the restaurant cloakroom, she invites him back to her apartment for sex. Their intercourse is interrupted when Patrick realizes that he has forgotten his spermicidal lubricant. After finding some of hers, sex is interrupted again when Courtney realizes that Bateman is wearing an insufficiently safe contraceptive.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Business Meeting”
Bateman is hungover from a previous night’s cocaine binge and becomes irritated when his secretary Jean tells him about an important meeting he has at 11. He manages to make it to the meeting. He is complimented by Luis Carruthers, Courtney’s boyfriend, who “follows like a puppy dog” after Bateman (103). He sees McDermott who is angry with him for criticizing the pizza at Pastels. McDermott manages to change Bateman’s opinion about the pizza when he shows him an article from the Financial Times where Donald Trump claims Pastels pizza is the best in New York.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Video Store then D’Agostino’s’”
Bateman goes to the video store to rent pornography. He is embarrassed when he sees someone he knows and decides to rent something else. After browsing through the comedy section and considering a Woody Allen film he settles on Body Double, something he has already seen 37 times. He has an awkward conversation with the “dumpy girl” at the checkout, telling her about his favorite violent scene in Body Double. He goes to a shop, D’Agostino’s. There he buys items for dinner. Outside he starts feeling the effects of the Valium he had taken earlier and ends up “standing, drooling in front of the store” (110), staring into space for several minutes.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Facial”
Patrick goes to get a massage and facial at Xclusive with a woman named Helga. He flexes his muscles hoping to impress her and tells her about a violent fantasy he has involving transfusing the blood of a dog into a woman.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Date with Evelyn”
That evening Bateman has a date with Evelyn. Before they meet, she tells him that her neighbor had been found decapitated the previous night. Bateman says that the woman’s head in his fridge, but she does not listen. She remains oblivious to what he’s saying at the restaurant. She talks about a friend’s ostentatious wedding and drops hints that Patrick should propose to her. This is despite him repeatedly talking about violent murders he has committed or wants to commit.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Tuesday”
At a mediocre black-tie party, Patrick sees Courtney who warns him that her boyfriend, Luis, suspects them of having an affair. Bateman leaves early claiming he must return some videos. Instead, he wanders the streets and sees a homeless man lying asleep outside an abandoned store. Patrick wakes up and talks to the man, asking him “why don’t you get a job?” (125) After feigning sympathy, he stabs him in the eyes and stomach, blinding him, before visiting McDonald’s for a milkshake.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Genesis”
Bateman describes in elaborate detail why he loves the band, Genesis, especially after the departure of Peter Gabriel and when Phil Collins became more influential, starting with the release of their 1980s album Duke. Bateman assesses their other albums and the themes of “loneliness, paranoia and alienation” present in specific songs (129).
Chapter 18 Summary: “Lunch”
Patrick is getting lunch with Christopher Armstrong, who works at the same firm as him, in an uninspiring restaurant. Christopher is telling him in tedious detail about his holiday in the Bahamas, how amazing it was, and why everyone should go there. Meanwhile, Bateman fantasizes about killing Armstrong, cutting his own wrists, then aiming the blood at Armstrong to stop him from talking.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Concert”
Evelyn and Bateman attend a U2 concert in New Jersey. They go with Luis, Courtney, and Paul Owen, who continually mistakes Bateman for someone else. Bateman is unimpressed until he has an otherworldly experience: U2’s lead singer, Bono, seems to look directly at him. Everything in the world seems to disappear, leaving only him and Bono, attached in some profound way. This feeling quickly dissipates.
Chapter 20 Summary: “A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon”
Bateman emerges from a drug-induced hangover sweating, with a pounding headache, and not knowing where he is. He wanders around the streets and buys some rats from a pet store to torture and kill. He also buys a large amount of crack cocaine from a dealer and consumes it all in one go. He then unwittingly enters a diner which is Jewish and tries repeatedly to order a cheeseburger and milkshake. When the waitress explains that the restaurant is kosher and cannot serve this, Bateman does not understand and storms out angry and confused.
Chapters 9-20 Analysis
Conversations and relationships between Bateman and others start off as vapid and superficial and quickly degenerate into total disconnect. This is epitomized by the scene in the drycleaners. The Chinese woman there talks at Bateman. He can neither understand her nor make himself understood. What he tries but fails to communicate centers on his bloodstained clothes. Metaphorically, his true, violent, nature eludes discussion or understanding. This is a pattern that is repeated, again and again. In the restaurant, Bateman tells his colleague that “my life is a living hell” and that “there are many more people that I, uh, want to, well… murder” (136). His colleague seems not to hear and continues to drone on about his holiday. Likewise with Evelyn. He reveals to her that he “killed those two black kids” and has her neighbor’s decapitated head in his freezer (116). But as Bateman reflects, “she does not fully grasp a word I’m saying. My essence is eluding her” (120). Evelyn, not hearing, continues her monologue about weddings. Her obliviousness to his true nature is rendered more tragic by the fact that he is the man that she wants to marry.
Disconnect is underscored by erosion of identity. Paul Owen confuses Bateman for an entirely different person, Marcus Halberstam. Yet, as Bateman says, “for some reason it really doesn’t matter” and is “a logical faux pas” (86). He and Marcus work at the same company, do the same job, and wear the same brands of clothes. Their lives and characters, like everyone in that world, seem indistinguishable and interchangeable. Everyone is basically the same and so too are their experiences. Just as others cannot distinguish Bateman, he finds it increasingly hard to distinguish between others. Evelyn, Courtney, and the other “hardbodies” are undifferentiated and characterless in their perfection. So too are the stream of business colleagues Bateman meets for lunch or drinks. Indeed, Patrick often forgets who precisely it is he is supposed to be meeting on any given day.
However, it is in this context that Bateman strives for some kind of authenticity. He looks to gain positive recognition of himself as an individual and to find it in others. This is reflected in his question to his friends about women: “what if they have a good personality?” (87) He wants somehow to meet someone who might be more than just an indistinguishable “hardbody.” This is seen in his attempt to help a student, whom he confuses for a homeless person. It is in his interactions with the “dumpy girl” at the video store (108). It is her imperfection, lack of fashion sense, and “nice eyes” that attracts Bateman to her (108). And it is this that leads him to try and make “direct eye contact” with her and to start a normal conversation (108). It is there in his relationship with music. At the U2 concert Bateman has a strange semi-mystical experience where he feels the rest of the audience disappear: “an invisible cord attached to Bono has now encircled me” (141). This experience is focused on eye contact. It symbolizes the hope that music can provide a basis for authentic experience and interpersonal connection.
Bateman’s attempts to connect are thwarted. He does not possess the psychological or social resources to initiate more meaningful connections. The world he inhabits has warped him. His clumsy attempts at more humane interactions are rebuked. The experience with Bono is revealed to be a sham. It is a contrived stage trick and a generic experience aimed at everyone. The reality and sleaziness of that world is revealed by the fact that Bono has staff select women in the audience to have sex with him. Bateman’s pursuit of true recognition and authenticity is a failure. To deal with the boredom and banality of existence he turns more and more to drugs and violence. To escape the absence of feeling, he pursues the annihilation of himself and others. He goes on increasingly destructive cocaine binges. He mutilates and murders strangers. In his bid to stand out and be heard as an individual, he is pushed into ever more extreme and awful crimes.
Related Titles
By Bret Easton Ellis
