The Criticism of Consumer Society in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho

Abstract

The novel raises the question, whether it is just a fictional story about a serial killer, or it foreshadows a bigger problem, a failure of a system. With a character like Bateman, Ellis suggests that the book is about the latter. He created the perfect example of a person who is the product of a society, which is completely affected by consumerism. In Bateman’s world the most important things became money and status, therefore people completely lost their identity. The aim of this thesis is to explore and examine this phenomenon as well as the impacts of consumer culture on Patrick Bateman’s life.