<p>My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman.</p><p>My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse.</p><p>If one look upon reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of. Patrick Bateman has only access to one voice, the voice of consumer capitalism and it is the singularity of Bateman that constitutes his ”not thereness”.</p>

My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman. My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse. If one look upon reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of. Patrick Bateman has only access to one voice, the voice of consumer capitalism and it is the singularity of Bateman that constitutes his ”not thereness”.

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“Does provocativeliterature have a place in Swedish courses in high school? An examination of the didactic potential of American Psycho”. The essay aims to examine the didactic potential of the novel American Psycho with the support of the theoretical concept of alienation and Rita Felski's four aspects of reading (recognition,enchantment, knowledge, shock). By highlighting the defamiliarizationeffects that exist in the novel's duplications and extremes, the result shows a variety of didactically relevant questions. Among other things, the alienating effects show how the shifts in aspects could arise regarding issues concerning identity, human conditions and the view of society and people. Consequently, the results show that provocative literature, and in particular American Psycho, can be motivated on the basis that it challenges the student to new thoughts and opensnew perspectives, despite controversial and provocative content.

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"Invasive cultures: American culture in Bret Easton Ellis’ American psycho” proposes that Ellis' small body of fictional works can be read as active critiques of American culture, detailing the ways in which this culture informs the current condition of American society in recent times. The larger intent of this thesis is to delineate and examine the relays between American culture, the forces of capitalism that underlie them, and their significant bearing on the social behaviour, personal expression and psychology of Ellis’ characters, who often directly assimilate and embody its characteristics, whether physically or mentally. Ellis presents his characters as deeply informed by their contact with the cultural realm. / Ellis' preoccupations with popular and consumer cultures, with the increasingly invasive mass media, and with a visually oriented society obsessed with surfaces, are all examined in the light of how these cultures are radically entangled with the consciousness and behaviour of his characters. In Ellis' fiction, the banal and the sensational are lucrative fixtures of a culture that functions as a commercial industry, driven by profit like any other, that exploits the desires and expectations of its consumers. Moreover, these common representations and modes of expression are presented as contagious, seeping into personal modes of self-expression. Just as Ellis instances how culture rigorously shapes the body and lifestyle, he also demonstrates through the stylized consciousness of his characters the media's powerful influence on their subjectivity and behaviour. This thesis focuses on American psycho (1991) but also discusses Ellis' other novels Less than zero (1984), The rules of attraction (1987), and The informers (1994).

This paper analyzes Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991), and more specifically, the protagonist-narrator Patrick Bateman. He is analyzed through the theoretical framework known as narratology, and more specifically, the designation of “unreliable narrator,” in order to analyze the interplay between the character and the postmodernist society of which he is a product. This paper also uses the critical approach of close reading as a method. Close reading will be used in order to analyze Bateman and his narration. This essay will argue that in American Psycho, the protagonist-narrator Bateman’s loss of control over reality is described as arising because of how postmodern society works to fit people into a mould and remove individuality. Bateman displays the excesses of the 1980s, and he conforms to the expectations of postmodern society, which emphasizes consumerism and trends but no substance. He lives in a postmodern society that highlights materialism, consumerism, and reality versus hyperreality. He tries to find his identity, away from superficiality and wealth, but fails. He takes out his frustration on people who are in a lower social class than him, and he murders and tortures his victims as a result. Bateman does not only live like someone out of a magazine, but he also copies serial killers, but: he has no real identity or even original method of murder. Bateman takes on an identity as a serial killer and imitates their crimes. He finds himself torn between the postmodern reality and the reality he creates in his mind.

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