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Dramatic Irony
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
American Psycho is a prototypical work of late postmodernism. Ellis's novel bears many characteristic elements of the literary movement: Patrick Bateman is an antihero and unreliable narrator, the novel features brutally direct and practical descriptions of sex and violence, and it features cutting socioeconomic satire. Perhaps the most postmodern feature of the novel is Ellis's manipulation of the truth. Postmodernists asked whether the novel, as a literary form, is capable of depicting life as truly lived; by the end of American Psycho, it is unclear whether the events of the novel happened, or whether Patrick imagined them, lied about them, or some combination of the two. Is the novel an honest depiction of a man's delusions, or a dishonest depiction by a first-person narrator of his own true actions? Ellis keeps these questions ambiguous, a hallmark of postmodern literature.
Further back in literary history, the novel also hearkens to American Realism. This literary movement peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rags-to-riches stories were popular, in which Americans from humble origins rose to become businessmen of renown. Typified by William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham, realist novels usually followed one resilient yet flawed man as he attempts to rise to the top of American society.
American Psycho resembles these novels for its focus on businessmen and their foibles, as well as for the satirical picture of that industry. Ellis gives a realist view of the investment banking industry: it is full of men who fuss about their appearance and status and never seem to care about work. Bateman is certainly a character like Silas Lapham and other realist protagonists, driven by a combination of unshakeable egotism and an anxious need to fit in with society. But unlike those older novels, Patrick does not have to struggle to pull himself up by his bootstraps—he is already popular, wealthy, and well-educated at the beginning of the novel. Instead, he has to struggle against his own anxieties and addictions. Patrick's own deluded thoughts cause him trouble, not poverty or exclusion. American Psycho, fitting to its title, recasts the socioeconomic framework of American realist novels in a psychological lens.
