Concerning Mr. Bateman

Hello again!

SPOILER ALERT! This post, and probably my future posts, will include spoilers from the book.

I have now read a little over half of the book, and it is getting crazier and crazier. In this blog post, I will write about some of the characters in the book. My main focus will be about the mysterious Patrick Bateman. Since he is the narrator of the book, it is obvious that his thoughts and feelings are the ones that are being described most frequent and detailed.

Patrick Bateman is, as I have mentioned in my earlier blog post, a wealthy and materialistic Wall Street investment banker living on the Upper West Side. He is vice president at the company Pierce and Pierce which I believe is some kind of investment firm, but I am unfortunately not sure of the specifics concerning this. Last post I wrote briefly about the psyche of Bateman and especially about his obsession with details. As far as I have read he is still fixated with this, but now his mind reveal even darker and more awful thoughts. An example is when he says, "Daisy stays, sips Caron's champagne. I imagine her naked, murdered, maggots burrowing, feasting on her stomach, tits blackened by cigarette burns, Libby eating this corpse out (...)". These kinds of descriptions are persistent in the book, with him having violent and brutal thoughts about his fellow citizens. Not only are these vicious thoughts constantly in his head, he also turns out to be a serial killer that takes lives only for the pleasure of satisfaction. Several murders are explained in the most comprehensive ways and it seems like the victims are randomly picked people that he either chooses because they piss him of or because he is bored, often both. As I read the book even further, the murders are occurring more often.

In addition to him being a brutal murderer, Patrick Bateman also shows signs of sex addiction. He has several sexual partners, some regulars and some "one night stands". One of the regulars is Courtney Lawrence. Courtney is Luis Carruthers' girlfriend, but she is repeatedly cheating on him with Patrick. In one of the chapters in the book Bateman decides to kill Carruthers at a restaurant, simply because Luis annoys him, but he does not succeed because Carruthers expresses feelings for Bateman and these feelings take him by surprise. In addition to Luis and Courtney, Patrick also spend his time with Craig McDermott and David Van Patten, but their personalities are not described in the book, other than the fact that they share both successful careers and wealthy lifestyles with Bateman. Another close friend of him is Evelyn Williams, but they have a complicated and turbulent relationship that varies along with his mood.

These are some of the most central characters of the book so far, apart from Patrick Bateman of course. In the next post, I will write more about the actual storyline that have read so far. I hope you enjoy reading my blog and that some of you are being tempted to reading the book for yourself.

Until next time!