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American Psycho
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Chapters 29-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 29 Summary: “Birthday, Brothers”
It is the birthday of Patrick’s brother, Sean. Although Patrick despises him, he feels obligated to meet Sean for a meal. He tries to trick him into coming “by mentioning, not lightly, that something bad has happened” to their mother (215). Sean can get them a reservation at Dorsia, something that Patrick has continually failed to do. Despite having ostensibly no job or talents and having “bummed around” for much of his life, Sean is inexplicably popular and well-connected.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Lunch with Bethany”
Bateman meets with his ex-girlfriend from Harvard, Bethany, for lunch. He is extremely nervous, unable to control the shaking of his legs, and gives her a bizarre poem that he wrote. Patrick is infuriated when he hears that Bethany has a chef boyfriend who is the co-owner of Dorsia. She is slightly drunk and he convinces her to come back to his apartment. He knocks her unconscious and nails her hands to a plank before mutilating her.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Thursday”
The next night, Bateman heads to Nell’s with Courtney and McDermott. They have an elaborate conversation about brands of mineral water, and Bateman believes Courtney wants to sleep with McDermott. Later Bateman returns to his apartment to contemplate Bethany’s body. He reveals she had died earlier that day when he sawed off her arm.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Whitney Houston”
Bateman discusses in meticulous detail the musical virtues of Whitney Houston. Going over the merits of each track on her self-titled 1985 album, he claims that her music “instils one with the hope that it’s not too late for us to better ourselves, to act kinder” (244). He identifies “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” a song about long-lost lovers meeting up, as one of her most beautiful.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Dinner with Secretary”
Patrick realizes that Luis will be attending a dinner with two other colleagues and decides to cancel, leaving his evening free. Since he is bored and in the office, he asks Jean, who is also there, if she will join him. She gladly accepts and says that she wants to go to Dorsia. Unable to get a table, Bateman lies and says that he has booked one. This leads to an embarrassing scene in the restaurant when he pretends they are another couple, but the other couple show up. Jean is actually impressed by this charade and tells him “your sense of humor is so spontaneous” (251). Jean invites Patrick back to her apartment but he refuses to go in, motivated by a desire not to hurt her.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Detective”
A private investigator, Donald Kimball, shows up at Bateman’s office and questions him about the disappearance of Paul Owen. Kimball knows that Owen was supposed to have met Marcus Halberstam on the night of his disappearance. Marcus denies he was there and has an alibi. Despite this and Bateman’s nervousness, Kimball does not have any evidence connecting Bateman to what happened. Indeed, Kimball believes that Owen probably did go to London, as the answering machine message suggested, and will “turn up sooner or later” (264).
Chapter 35 Summary: “Summer”
Bateman decides to go on a summer holiday with Evelyn to the Hamptons, a seaside area on Long Island frequented by the wealthy, just outside of New York City. At first, he tries “to make things work” with her, doing romantic activities and cooking (269). However, they quickly become alienated from one another again and return to the city.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Girls”
Bateman invites a model, Elizabeth, and Christie, a sex worker who he has abused before, back to his apartment. Christie is lured again by the promise of money. Patrick drugs Elizabeth’s wine with ecstasy and encourages her to have sex with Christie. After they do so, he kills Elizabeth by cutting her neck with a knife and kills Christie by electrocuting her with a car battery.
Chapter 37 Summary: “Confronted by F*****”
Luis confronts Patrick in a shop while he is buying a belt. Luis professes his love for Bateman and tells him that “I know you have the same feelings I do” (282). Bateman is mortified, especially when Luis suggests they should leave New York and move to Arizona together. Bateman threatens to kill Luis as the latter breaks down in tears.
Chapter 38 Summary: “Killing Child at Zoo”
A listless Bateman visits the Central Park Zoo. He sees a snowy owl and is moved to kill. He lures a five-year-old boy away from his mother with a cookie. Unseen, he stabs the boy in the neck. When the boy is discovered, Bateman pretends to be a doctor so that he can watch him die. Bateman reflects that killing a child is less satisfying than killing an adult because a child has no real history or past.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Girls”
Because his own apartment smells, owing to Christie’s decomposing head, Bateman decides that he will use Paul Owen’s apartment for an evening with two sex workers. After one of the women tells a strange story about a monkey that used to live with her, he makes the two women have sex. Bateman then ties them both up. He horrifically kills both, pouring acid on one and pushing a power drill into the mouth of the other.
Chapter 40 Summary: “Rat”
It is mid-October and Bateman describes in elaborate detail the new sound equipment he has purchased. When he comes back from one sound shop he sees a huge rat in his bathroom. He tries to kill it with a mousetrap but it only maims the animal. This leads him to think about ways he can use the rat to torture people.
Chapters 29-40 Analysis
Bateman goes to the Hamptons to escape his “nightly bloodlust,” which was seeping into his days, threatening his public persona and the last vestiges of his sanity. He hopes that by returning to a more rural and romantic location that he can stave off psychological collapse, that he can recover equilibrium and hope.
For a moment with Evelyn this seems to work: “[A]fter skinny-dipping in the ocean late at night we would come into the house […] we’d make omelets and noodles tossed with olive oil and truffles […] poached pears and cinnamon fruit salads” (269-70). There is a sense that the quiet and repose of the Hamptons has stilled his rage. Free from the noise, distractions, and violence of the city, Bateman appears to recover both his humanity and connection to Evelyn. The simplicity and beauty of nature has rekindled a meaningful relation to the world. Tied to nature, it has rekindled romance.
The feeling is short-lived. As Bateman says: “Evelyn soon started talking only about spas and cosmetic surgery” (270). The world of the city, its superficiality and consumerism, creeps back. Bateman’s violent fantasies return. His relation to nature disintegrates and at night he ends up “roaming the beaches, digging up baby crabs and eating handfuls of sand” (270). He even microwaves a jellyfish. Yet the problem is not just the city or the addiction to its pleasures and products. It is, rather, that the very idea of escape, of nature and romance, is itself a product and production. This can be seen at the end of Patrick’s evening with Jean, his secretary, as she waits to be kissed. As Bateman says: “I am so used to imagining everything happening the way it occurs in movies […] that I almost hear the swelling of an orchestra […] fireworks bursting in slow motion overhead” (254-55). The evening was not romantic. Still, Bateman feels that, given the context, this “romantic” image should be present. Likewise, on his holiday with Evelyn, he can’t distinguish between a clichéd ideal of romance and his experience. He finds himself talking “about only romantic things” (269), the moon, the stars, “going to the south of France” (269).
This is invariably tied to an equally clichéd vision of nature. In this context it is hardly surprising that “nature” disappoints. It is just one more disposable, mass-produced commodity reaffirming an empty consumer lifestyle. Indeed, it is worse since it sells the possibility of escape. In the context of the novel, the Central Park Zoo presents a more accurate and authentic view of nature. It is why Bateman is drawn to it in his post-holiday malaise. As he says, “the zoo seemed empty, devoid of life. The polar bears look stained and drugged. A crocodile floats morosely in an oily makeshift pond” (285). This is nature without the production values. It is nature as it exists, and can exist, in the urban world. That is, grubby, caged, depressed, drugged. The rat Bateman finds exemplifies this kind of nature, a nature warped as much by the city as human beings are.
Bateman identifies with the animals, just as he had identified with Bono. Noticing that a snowy owl has eyes like his, he says that “something unspoken passes between me and the bird” (286). On the one hand, this can be read as Bateman further renouncing his humanity. On the other, it can be seen as empathy for the caged predators, prevented, like him, from fulfilling their true natures (286). It is evidence of the narcissistic sentiment he mentions in connection with Whitney Houston of “empathising with ourselves” (244). And it is perhaps a rare moment when Bateman evokes genuine pathos.
This is complicated by what follows. Any sympathy for Bateman as a caged animal aware of his plight is thwarted when he kills the little boy. It is also complicated by his abuse of the two sex workers. Bateman’s animalistic side appears when he looks up after biting one woman’s genitals, “blood covering my face, meat and pubic hair hanging from my mouth” (292). As much as the caged predator is a distressing sight, the sight of the uncaged one is worse.
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By Bret Easton Ellis
