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Description
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis’s modus operandi which critiques the shallow and superficial life of one Patrick Bateman, the yuppie’s yuppie, in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980’s. Its transgressive and postmodern qualities, as well as its graphic depictions of violence towards women, earned Ellis numerous death threats, while the book itself has been theoretically banned in Queensland, Australia.

Though the movie made Christian Bale a star in 2000 and was directed by a woman (Mary Harron, if you’re wondering), most of the book’s more violent and disturbing scenes were omitted. And with good reason, because it would never have made it past the censors. Given how the novel version of Bateman committed the following crimes… (If you’re of a nervous disposition, please look away now.)

1: Murdering his ex-girlfriend, Bethany, by crucifying her with a nail gun, then violently forcing her to give him oral sex repeatedly. The last we hear of her is when Patrick mentions he has cut her left arm off - he uses it to morbidly disfigure her corpse, bashing her repeatedly in the face, causing it to cave in on itself.

2: Severely mutilating and blinding a beggar before breaking the front legs of his dog and spitefully tossing a quarter onto his mangled face while laughing at their pain. Patrick re-encounters the same duo near the novel’s climax, who are suffering more than ever (the former holds a sign falsely claiming to be a Vietnam veteran for sympathy), but Patrick simply looks down on them with disgust and deems them not worth his time.

3: Brutally murdering an innocent "old queer” and his Shar Pei. He disembowels the dog, leaving it to convulse and bleed out before stabbing its owner in the face and head at random, slashing his throat open, and shooting him twice in the face with a silencer to ensure his death.

4: Needlessly murdering a random Asian delivery boy who was passing by, simply because Patrick had erroneously heard that the Japanese have bought the Empire State Building—only to find that his victim wasn't even Japanese; he was Chinese. Patrick only reacts to this with irritation.

5: Nonchalantly murdering Paul Owen (Allen in the movie) by mangling his face with an axe, leaving him to die slowly within five minutes, and leaves his corpse in an abandoned building in Hell’s Kitchen. Owen’s death in the novel is more gory than the film version where Bateman kills him to the sounds of "Hip to Be Square".

6: The various murders of numerous women, usually by luring dates or prostitutes to his apartment before inflicting the most brutal and conceivable tortures and rapes upon them—which only worsen as the novel progresses. In addition to this, he cannibalizes some of his victims and sexually violates or mutilates their corpses. Some of the details are too graphic to even describe here.

7: The downright shocking murder of a five year-old child by stealthily stabbing said child in the throat at Central Park Zoo, then posing as a doctor when the bleeding and choking child's mother cries out for help, only to ensure her son's slow death via inaction. He did this simply to see whether he would enjoy it, only to end up disappointed due to his conclusion that doing so spreads less suffering and severs less connections than would the death of a person with a full history, who would have more to lose. In essence, child murder isn't evil enough for him.

8: Using a starved rat to torture one unnamed prostitute. Not in the movie for obvious reasons. You’ll need more than nerves of steel and a strong stomach to get through this particular chapter.

9: The "Tries to Cook and Eat Girl” chapter. In short, Patrick grinds up his previous victim’s corpse into hamburgers and eats it. Despite musing that in his heart, he knows what he's doing is wrong, but then reminds himself that "this girl, this meat, is nothing, is shit". He knows what he's doing is wrong. He just doesn't care.

10: Treating Evelyn, his supposedly rich and equally shallow fiancée, horribly. For instance, he covers a urinal cake in chocolate and spitefully deceives Evelyn into eating it, then eventually coldly dumps her in public before FedExing her a box of flies with a note telling her to "[go] on a f**king diet" (despite not really needing one).

So in short, the novel version of Patrick Bateman is a depraved, disturbed, shallow, heartless, sadistic, repulsive and narcissistic psychopath. His crimes largely go unpunished because nobody else around him seems to care.

Description
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis’s modus operandi which critiques the shallow and superficial life of one Patrick Bateman, the yuppie’s yuppie, in Manhattan during the Wall Street boom of the late 1980’s. Its transgressive and postmodern qualities, as well as its graphic depictions of violence towards women, earned Ellis numerous death threats, while the book itself has been theoretically banned in Queensland, Australia.

Though the movie made Christian Bale a star in 2000 and was directed by a woman (Mary Harron, if you’re wondering), most of the book’s more violent and disturbing scenes were omitted. And with good reason, because it would never have made it past the censors. Given how the novel version of Bateman committed the following crimes… (If you’re of a nervous disposition, please look away now.)

1: Murdering his ex-girlfriend, Bethany, by crucifying her with a nail gun, then violently forcing her to give him oral sex repeatedly. The last we hear of her is when Patrick mentions he has cut her left arm off - he uses it to morbidly disfigure her corpse, bashing her repeatedly in the face, causing it to cave in on itself.

2: Severely mutilating and blinding a beggar before breaking the front legs of his dog and spitefully tossing a quarter onto his mangled face while laughing at their pain. Patrick re-encounters the same duo near the novel’s climax, who are suffering more than ever (the former holds a sign falsely claiming to be a Vietnam veteran for sympathy), but Patrick simply looks down on them with disgust and deems them not worth his time.

3: Brutally murdering an innocent "old queer” and his Shar Pei. He disembowels the dog, leaving it to convulse and bleed out before stabbing its owner in the face and head at random, slashing his throat open, and shooting him twice in the face with a silencer to ensure his death.

4: Needlessly murdering a random Asian delivery boy who was passing by, simply because Patrick had erroneously heard that the Japanese have bought the Empire State Building—only to find that his victim wasn't even Japanese; he was Chinese. Patrick only reacts to this with irritation.

5: Nonchalantly murdering Paul Owen (Allen in the movie) by mangling his face with an axe, leaving him to die slowly within five minutes, and leaves his corpse in an abandoned building in Hell’s Kitchen. Owen’s death in the novel is more gory than the film version where Bateman kills him to the sounds of "Hip to Be Square".

6: The various murders of numerous women, usually by luring dates or prostitutes to his apartment before inflicting the most brutal and conceivable tortures and rapes upon them—which only worsen as the novel progresses. In addition to this, he cannibalizes some of his victims and sexually violates or mutilates their corpses. Some of the details are too graphic to even describe here.

7: The downright shocking murder of a five year-old child by stealthily stabbing said child in the throat at Central Park Zoo, then posing as a doctor when the bleeding and choking child's mother cries out for help, only to ensure her son's slow death via inaction. He did this simply to see whether he would enjoy it, only to end up disappointed due to his conclusion that doing so spreads less suffering and severs less connections than would the death of a person with a full history, who would have more to lose. In essence, child murder isn't evil enough for him.

8: Using a starved rat to torture one unnamed prostitute. Not in the movie for obvious reasons. You’ll need more than nerves of steel and a strong stomach to get through this particular chapter.

9: The "Tries to Cook and Eat Girl” chapter. In short, Patrick grinds up his previous victim’s corpse into hamburgers and eats it. Despite musing that in his heart, he knows what he's doing is wrong, but then reminds himself that "this girl, this meat, is nothing, is shit". He knows what he's doing is wrong. He just doesn't care.

10: Treating Evelyn, his supposedly rich and equally shallow fiancée, horribly. For instance, he covers a urinal cake in chocolate and spitefully deceives Evelyn into eating it, then eventually coldly dumps her in public before FedExing her a box of flies with a note telling her to "[go] on a f**king diet" (despite not really needing one).

So in short, the novel version of Patrick Bateman is a depraved, disturbed, shallow, heartless, sadistic, repulsive and narcissistic psychopath. His crimes largely go unpunished because nobody else around him seems to care.