









































American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis 
is a post modern satire of the 1980s 
American culture. In this essay, I 
argue that Ellis uses the facets of a 
serial killer to methodically break 
down the impact that trickledown 
economics had on marginalized 
communities in the U.S. Trickledown 
economics is a tax policy which 
posits that favoring the rich in 
terms of tax breaks, allows the the 
wealthy to trickledown to the masses. 
While  a  seemingly good theory, 
the results devastated marginalized 
communities throughout the nation 
as the richer got richer and the poor 
got poorer. Ellis’ novel establishes 
Bateman as the stand-in for this type 
of unchecked capitalism, and his 

Cogs in the Machine: 
An Analysis of American 

Psycho 

Rae Keeler, Ball State University

62

violence is a representation of this. For 
example, Ellis’ depiction of Bateman 
as a product killer establishes how 
capitalism treats its victims before 
leaving them behind in the form 
of the homeless and marginalized. 
Furthermore, these people become 
Bateman’s victims, who in the true 
crime community are known as the 
“less dead.” This is  Ellis’ commentary 
on how the justice system treats these 
individuals already and why Bateman 
ultimately gets away with his crimes.



The 1980s in America was a time marked by terror and blood. With the election 
of President Reagan came a revolution that would follow the Republican Party until 
today after the introduction of trickle-down economics or also called Reaganomics. 
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis methodically breaks down each facet of a 
serial killer through his protagonist Patrick Bateman and compares them to stages 
of capitalism in 1980s America. While the movie has become iconic in pop culture, 
this essay will focus on Ellis’s book as it is how the author originally intended it 
and because the depictions of violence are more extreme. Much of the modern 
scholarship surrounding American Psycho argues about the identity crisis of the 
white male and whether Ellis is sympathetic towards the white male anxiety, which 
stems from the fear that their time at the top of society is ending as the acceptance 
of new identities arrives. Storey argues that “Ellis shows us the monstrous heart of 
masculinity at the outer limits, a frenzied pomophobia [a convergence of fear from 
late capitalism, including feminism, non-straight sexualities, and anything else 
diverging from ‘normal’]” (58). In other words, Bateman’s desire to be in control, 
in conjunction with his anxiety over losing power, is ultimately what causes his 
downfall. While I would agree that Bateman being white and wealthy are key in 
understanding this novel, Ellis is not focused on Bateman’s identity itself, but rather 
what it represents, which is that those who gained the most from Reaganomics and 
who hoarded wealth and power caused economic despair upon the middle and lower 
classes. I contend instead that Ellis uses the composition of a serial killer to illustrate 
the effects of capitalism in America.  
 The concept of trickle-down economics posits that if the rich were given giant 
tax breaks, then the wealth would trickle down and eventually be distributed to the 
rest of society. In practice, it favors the upper class, particularly large corporations 
and extremely wealthy investors. Those who idealize this practice believe that when 
big businesses receive tax benefits, they will treat their workers better. When it 
was advocated by former President Reagan, however, all it resulted in was the rich 
getting richer, hoarding their wealth as the poor became poorer (Hartsoe). Not only 
was trickle-down economics forcing economic disparity onto the masses, but also, 
this decade saw the highest levels of active serial killers than ever before and since 
(Aamodt). By putting these two ideas together Ellis depicts how the violence of 
unchecked capitalism is similar to the violence of serial killing.  
 Ellis begins his novel by establishing the importance of the setting, which 
reveals the significance of the plot that unfolds. Ellis reveals the core of the attitudes 
held by the newly rich of the era via the first spoken words in the novel as Bateman 
and his coworker Price ride in a taxi towards an event and Price suddenly says, “‘I’m 

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resourceful… I’m creative, I’m young, unscrupulous, highly motivated, highly skilled. 
In essence what I’m saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I’m an asset’” 
(3). In other words, because of Price’s identity as a wealthy white man working on 
Wall Street, he believes that he is more valuable to society than other people. This 
is significant because it reveals the inner psyche of the characters, which will be 
juxtaposed by the events that happen as the novel progresses as well as the economic 
disparity that is also shown throughout the novel, but especially as Ellis establishes 
the setting: “His voice stops, he takes in a breath and then quietly says, his eyes fixed 
on a beggar at the corner of Second and Fifth, ‘That’s the twenty-fourth one I’ve 
seen today. I’ve kept count’” (4). Price’s casual counting off all the homeless people 
he sees while just on a casual drive demonstrates the disparity of the economy. It 
is important to note how the powerful can look at those affected by the economy 
that they are directly benefiting from and remain unaffected by them while their 
actions directly impact the homeless. This is demonstrated particularly when Price 
sees another homeless person and jokingly says to Bateman, “‘Ask him if he takes 
American Express’” (7). His cruelty towards the homeless reflects the attitude of 
American society during this period, which is key to understanding why Bateman’s 
murders and mutilations relate to capitalism.  
 Furthermore, Ellis introduces another motif that is consistently returned to 
throughout the novel at integral moments. As Bateman and Price continue the drive, 
Ellis makes sure to note that there is “another advertisement for Les Misérables” (6). 
While it could be explained that the musical is frequently brought up because it was 
the most popular show on Broadway at the time, I contend that Ellis is alluding to 
the French Revolution and the story of Jean Valjean because the musical tells the 
story of not just the lower-class starting a bloody uprising, but also the story of a 
man who was punished for stealing a loaf of bread for his family. In essence, he is 
punished for the entirety of his life for being poor. This is something that Ellis is 
clearly considering when crafting the setting for his novel. Having the backdrop 
of the poor being punished shows how cruel society can truly be. Without these 
critical themes that Ellis establishes, none of the gore that follows would hold any 
significant meaning.  
 Ellis devotes an entire chapter to describe at extreme length Bateman’s morning 
routine to establish him as the vehicle for his metaphor for capitalism. Ellis begins by 
showing how Bateman describes his apartment: “A Toshiba VCR sits in a glass case 
beneath the TV set; it’s a super-high band Beta unit and has built-in editing function 
including a character generator with eight-page memory, a high-band record and 
playback, and three-week, eight-event timer” (25). The depiction of the apartment’s 
features, especially with the inclusion of the brand names, becomes a representation 

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of consumerism in the extreme and an embodiment of the slogan “greed is good,” 
which was popularized during the era. Bateman’s obsession with material things 
reveals not only his wealth and the shallowness of his personality but also turns him 
into a symbol of capitalism. The objective of capitalism is to gain and maintain as 
much wealth as possible, which is made much easier by trickle-down economics. This 
is displayed through Bateman’s obsession with having status symbols of his wealth 
and extends to his physical appearance, from his clothing and perfectly groomed hair 
to his in-depth morning ritual of skin care and workout routines, which Ellis takes 
the rest of the chapter to depict.  
 Another way that Bateman is both obsessed with his appearance and attempts 
to present himself the same as the rest of society is through his clothes, which are 
frequently brought up by Bateman himself. When he is leaving in the morning, 
he “find[s] a Burberry scarf and matching coat with a whale embroidered on it 
(something a little kid might wear) and it’s covered with what looks like dried 
chocolate syrup crisscrossed over the front, darkening the lapels” (Ellis 30). Ellis is 
subtly hinting, not only at Bateman’s materialism by again mentioning the expensive 
name brand and the details of the design, but also at his violence. “[W]hat looks like 
dried chocolate syrup” creates the image of dried blood, intrinsically linking violence 
as a part of his materialism. By creating this character profile for Bateman, Ellis 
establishes him as a symbol of capitalism and the violence that ensues from it.  
 An important feature of the novel is much like the economy at the time in 
which the novel is set, Bateman is already in a state of escalation with his killing. He 
needs increasingly more violence and deviance to get the same amount of pleasure. 
Graham argues that the intensification of capitalism is “comparable to the shocking 
amorality of transgression, this extremity is characterized by a process of escalation 
integral to Bateman’s hyperviolence, demonstrated through his increasingly depraved 
but localized scenes of brutality” (228-229). In other words, Bateman feels the need 
to escalate his crimes because he is a representation of the economy at the time. 
While I do believe that Bateman is certainly acting as a representation of what the 
economy is doing at the time, I argue that Ellis is even more specific in what he is 
depicting through Bateman. As a member of the Wall Street class of the nouveau 
riche, the economic scale is tipped in his favor as the stock market skyrockets—of 
course before its inevitable crash—and he can hoard the wealth that he is gaining in 
extreme due to the policies of the Reagan administration. His escalation can be seen 
in the way that Bateman casually starts to incorporate violence into his thoughts. 
For instance, when he is spending time with his coworkers, he begins to have violent 
urges when his coworker says something he does not agree with: “I have a knife 
with a serrated blade in the pocket of my Valentino jacket and I’m tempted to gut 

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McDermott with it right here in the entranceway, maybe slice his face open, sever his 
spine” (Ellis 53). This is significant because it shows how casually Bateman regards 
violence at this point because something small can set him off and something 
equally as small—such as going to a club—can convince him not to murder and or 
torture someone.  
 Bateman’s violent personality traits continue to be depicted and gradually 
escalate as the novel continues through Ellis’s demonstrations of how easily Bateman 
is angered. For example, when the waitress at the club ignores his flirting he states, 
“I tell her I would like to tit-fuck her and then maybe cut her arms off, but the music, 
George Michael singing ‘Faith,’ is too loud and she can’t hear me” (Ellis 80). Not only 
is he set off by a minor inconvenience, which illustrates how Ellis is establishing 
that Bateman is in a state of violent escalation, but he also blatantly states several 
times the violent acts that he would like to commit or has already committed. Despite 
this, he is never taken seriously. This is comparable to the novel’s depiction of the 
increasing disparity between the rich and poor as well as the increasing homelessness 
that was taking place, yet no one is attempting to solve or take it seriously.  
 Ellis continues to show how trivially Bateman’s actions are taken and how 
it parallels how the privileged part of society treats those they can ignore. This is 
particularly clear during a scene in the dry cleaners in which he is angry about them 
not getting the blood stains out of his clothes: “The Chinese dry cleaners I usually 
send my bloody clothes to delivered back to me yesterday a Soprani jacket, two 
white Brooks Brothers shirts and a tie from Agnes B. still covered with flecks of 
someone’s blood” (Ellis 81). When he is unable to get the dry cleaner to understand 
that he wants the bloodstains out because of a language barrier in conjunction with 
underlying racism and frustration at having to deal with someone below him in 
class, he becomes increasingly angrier, resulting in him having increasingly violent 
thoughts: “I have never firebombed anything and I start wondering how one goes 
about it—what materials are involved, gasoline, matches... or would it be lighter 
fluid?” (83). Bateman is prevented from acting out on his violent urges, however, 
because a woman who lives in his building also enters the dry cleaners. When she 
notices the bloodstained sheets, though, Bateman’s response is, “‘It’s, um, cranberry 
juice, cranapple juice… I mean, um, it’s really... Bosco. You know, like… Like a 
Dove Bar. It’s a Dove Bar... Hershey’s Syrup?’” (84). Despite Bateman’s excuse being 
incredibly flimsy and practically incoherent, the neighbor does not care, which is 
clear when she still attempts to flirt with him. This is another extreme example of 
how society disregards issues that are staring them directly in the face, and in this 
case, how trickle-down economics is a disaster that is resulting in lower-class people 
paying the price.  

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 Product versus process killers is a term colloquially used within the true crime 
community to characterize distinct types of killers. The difference between the 
two is whether the person kills because they want the outcome of having a dead 
body, such as in the case of Ed Gein or John Wayne Gacy, or whether the person 
enjoys the process and does not want to deal with the body afterward, such as BTK 
(Kissel et al.). Ellis distinctly establishes Bateman as a process killer, which reveals 
how capitalism treats its victims. Significantly, the first time that Ellis depicts 
Bateman carrying out an act of violence the victim is a “bum, a black man [with 
a] handprinted cardboard sign attached to the front of the cart [which] reads I AM 
HUNGRY AND HOMELESS PLEASE HELP ME” (128). It is not a coincidence that 
the first victim Ellis has Bateman attack is a homeless man. Ellis is establishing 
that not only will this man become Bateman’s victim, but he is already a victim of 
capitalism. In a game that is rigged for those who are already white and wealthy to 
win, this man has lost and now Ellis will demonstrate the consequences of losing 
the game of capitalism in America. Bateman, much like society, regards the man 
with disdain, asking the questions that privileged people untouched by economic 
despair frequently ask: “‘Why don’t you get a job?... If you’re so hungry, why don’t 
you get a job?’” (129). In other words, Bateman becomes not only a representation 
of capitalism but also the cruel attitudes of society at this moment when he berates a 
man who is most likely at his lowest and relishes in the process.  
 Ellis establishes Bateman as a process killer when he starts to depict the actual 
killing: “I pull out a long, thin knife with a serrated edge and, being very careful 
not to kill him, push maybe half an inch of the blade into his right eye, flicking the 
handle up, instantly popping the retina” (131). The graphic description reveals how 
Bateman is enjoying the process of torturing and mutilating, not just getting it over 
with so that he can use the body. In other words, Bateman is relishing the process of 
mutilating the man and the feeling he derives from it but does not want anything to 
do with the person after he has received his pleasure from the act, which can be seen 
later in the text when Bateman progresses to killing and when looking at the body he 
claims, “I get very tired looking at it” (291). This is the same as what capitalism does 
to those who suffer from the consequences and what society does to the victims of 
it. In the exact same way that Bateman does not want to deal with the consequences 
of his actions—the leftover bodies—so too does capitalism not want to deal with its 
victims—the homeless and desolate.  
 As the plot continues, Bateman’s victims, much like the homeless man, 
continue to be members of traditionally marginalized communities. Storey argues, 
“For Bateman to remain coherent, his unstable sense of self requires a particularly 
savage attack on the ‘other’ and a clear idea of who they are. Everyone he ‘murders’ 

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presents some kind of challenge to his position of patriarchal supremacy” (Storey 
65). While Storey is playing into the popular idea that Bateman’s acts of violence 
may or may not be real, his point of Bateman’s violence against others still stands on 
its own. In other words, to remain sane and in power, Bateman must attack others, 
especially those who are not white, wealthy, and male. While I agree that both 
Bateman’s and his victims’ identities are essential to the understanding of the novel, 
it is less about maintaining the patriarchy itself, but the entire capitalist system, 
which is upheld by the patriarchy. I also contend that the others that he references 
are part of a population that has been titled “the less dead” in true crime, which 
was defined by Los Angeles Police Department officer Mitzi Roberts, who caught 
infamous serial killer Samuel Little, as “people who live on the margins of society 
and whose murders have historically tended to be not as thoroughly investigated as 
those of their wealthier, whiter, and perhaps more sober counterparts” (Lauren 3). 
In other words, serial killers can get away with their crimes for longer—and perhaps 
even reach the status of a serial killer—because the deaths of the populations that 
they normally prey on are not investigated in the same way that a wealthy, white 
person’s death would be.  
 The fact that these victims’ crimes go uninvestigated due to social and 
economic factors exemplifies how even the world of crime is not untouched by the 
politics and evils of capitalism, which Ellis is clearly aware of, proven by Bateman’s 
murder victims. Ellis makes this clear, not only with Bateman’s first assault being 
a black, homeless man but also when the first person he is shown killing is “an 
old queer... walking a brown and white sharpei” (164). Homophobic attitudes have 
prevented police from investigating crimes for many years, but particularly in the 
eighties with the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, the likelihood of a gay man’s death 
to be investigated is significantly lower, which includes members of the LGBT+ 
community in the “less dead” population. Ellis demonstrates the cruelty that society 
unleashes on members of the communities through Bateman’s violent killing as he 
“start[s] randomly stabbing him in the face and head” (166). Unlike before, however, 
where his victim was left alive and wounded, Bateman opted to “make sure the old 
queer is really dead and not faking it (they sometimes do) I shoot him with a silencer 
twice in the face and then I leave” (166). By depicting the violence and killing of 
a gay man, Ellis argues that in capitalism members of the LGBT+ community also 
suffer. 
 As the plot progresses, Bateman turns to sex workers as his next category 
of victims, which then includes them in Ellis’s own definition of the less dead and 
victims of capitalism. After Bateman picks up two sex workers, brings them back to 
his apartment, and engages in a sex act, his reoccurring urge to escalate takes over 

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as he describes, “I stand up and walk over to the armoire, where next to the nail 
gun, rests a sharpened coat hanger, a rusty butter knife, matches from the Gotham 
Bar and Grill, and a half-smoked cigar; and turning around, naked, my erection 
jutting out in front of me, I hold these items out and explain in a hoarse whisper, 
‘We’re not through yet...’” (Ellis 176). This extreme act of violence he commits on the 
two women he does without fear of repercussions because he is aware that as sex 
workers, they are not able to report the crimes that are taking place against them. 
Those who are lumped into this category share the fact that both in capitalism and in 
death, they lose their value and identity. 
 Ellis broadens who he believes loses value in capitalism, however, when 
Bateman starts to pick off people within his own class. Colby contends that “[t]
he novel exhibits a present-day society devoid of values, one that has been made 
vacuous by the violence of global capitalism, revealing an unbearable nihilism that 
has deeply affected the family unit and the individual in everyday life” (340). In 
other words, the violence in Ellis’s work reveals the belief that no one and nothing 
matters in globalized capitalism because of the deep devaluation of individuals. In 
capitalism, the only thing that is valued is your output of work, which should be 
sacrificed more than anything else. This can be seen in the ways that up until this 
point, Bateman’s victims were homeless people, gay men, and prostitutes.  
 When he kills Paul Owen—another Wall Street yuppie, whom Bateman is in 
fact frequently mistaken for—Ellis begins to show the ways in which people are 
devalued in capitalism and how the extreme lack of identity leads to everyone 
being interchangeable, which can be seen in the way that Owen has the same kind 
of violent death as all of Bateman’s other victims: “The ax hits him midsentence, 
straight in the face, its thick blade chopping sideways into his open mouth, shutting 
him up” (217-218). In other words, capitalism has turned him into just another 
body that is only meant to be used, and when the system has decided that its use is 
finished, it eliminates it. This can also be seen in the way that Bateman treats Owen’s 
corpse: “I carry the body up four flights of stairs until we’re at the unit I own in the 
abandoned building and I place Owen’s body into an oversize porcelain tub, strip off 
his Abboud suit and, after wetting the corpse down, pour two bags of lime over it” 
(219). In other words, Bateman, as the hand of capitalism, starts to treat those within 
his own class the same way that he has treated the “less dead.” Ellis is showing that 
in the world of capitalism, no one’s identity truly matters—that everyone is valueless 
in this system.  
 Ellis continues to develop this theme when he introduces a private investigator 
hired to investigate Owen’s disappearance. At first, Bateman believes he will be 
caught, but his alibi is created by another co-worker who claims “‘[h]e was at 

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Atlantis with Craig McDermott, Frederick Dibble, Harry Newman, George Bunter 
and... you [Bateman]’” (Ellis 274). Ellis shows how even Bateman is replaceable in 
a capitalist system because while he is murdering someone an unknown person can 
take his place and the people that he spends the most time with will not notice that it 
is not Bateman that is having dinner with them. Ellis even begins to depict Bateman 
as taking the place of the now-dead Owen: “I decide to use Paul Owen’s apartment 
for a little tryst I have planned for tonight” (301). Much like a job opening, once the 
position for Owen is open, Bateman can seamlessly slip into that role, and no one 
questions it. In fact, Bateman goes as far as to buy expensive items “charging them 
on Paul Owen’s gold American Express card” (301). In other words, Bateman becomes 
a spiritual replacement for Owen, which he can do because who Paul Owen is does 
not matter—only the output of the work he creates. Ellis is subversively showing how 
it is not just those who suffer from the violence of capitalism who lose value and 
identity but that in a capitalist society, no one’s identity actually exists and therefore 
does not matter. 
 The climax of the novel is reached when Bateman’s largest killing spree is 
triggered. Ellis depicts at this point that the bloody spree serves as a cautionary 
tale of what will happen if unchecked trickle-down economics is to continue. The 
biggest economic failure of Reaganomics did not occur until the recession of 2008, 
which left those who played the stock market penniless in some cases (Hartsoe). This 
spree, however, warns of this collapse as foresight as early as the 1990s because of 
the great inequality that was already apparent. Ellis begins to show the economic 
collapse when Bateman kills a street performer:  

I screw a silencer onto the gun... I raise the gun to his face and midnote pull the 
trigger, but the silencer doesn’t work... [T]he booming sound of the gunshot deafens 
me... I pop the clip and replace it with a full one, then something bad happens... 
because while doing this I’ve failed to notice the squad car that was traveling 
behind me. (Ellis 348) 

Up until this point, Bateman has not feared being caught, but when his power is 
threatened by the means of being caught by the police it causes a break in his 
psyche. Not only does he begin to murder people without abandon, seemingly not 
even enjoying the process, yet almost as a reflex, like it is the only thing he knows 
how to do, but he also begins to have an out-of-body experience, which is seen 
when Ellis, without warning, switches perspectives: “Patrick tries to put the cab 
in reverse but nothing happens, he staggers out of the cab” (349). In other words, 
Bateman’s perception of his body representation has shifted from inside him to 

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the external, as though he is a spectator watching his actions—as if he is trying to 
distance himself from what he has done. I contend that this out-of-body experience 
is a type of depersonalization, which represents what society does when it inflicts 
violence on others via capitalism—it tries to distance itself from it as much as 
possible. This switch in a moment of heightened drama is a physicalized version 
of what society inflicts upon the left-over bodies of capitalism after it has wreaked 
havoc. The kind of mass destruction both Bateman and capitalism are capable of is 
truly portrayed, however, when “a stray bullet, sixth in a new round, hits a gas tank 
of a police car, the headlights dim before it bursts apart, sending a fireball billowing 
up into the darkness” (350). The explosion draws attention and even more police to 
the scene, yet Bateman escapes out of sheer luck. While this moment is the largest 
display of mass violence in the book and ultimately causes him to call his lawyer to 
confess to all his crimes, Bateman’s escape from the law reveals Ellis’s argument that 
the criminal justice system allows the white, straight, cis, upper class to get away 
with crimes, leaving the rest of society to suffer at their hands.  
 As the bodies have piled up after his killing spree and the novel reaches its 
conclusion, Bateman starts to feel the need to compulsively confess his crimes. 
However, Ellis depicts how confession is not an option or exit: “[H]e confesses 
at the end of the novel that all of his violent acts come to nothing... [Therefore,] 
the text seems to warn that white male crisis is the latest form of justification for 
fascistic violence against racial, sexual, and classical minorities” (Kwon 66). In other 
words, Ellis turns his novel into a cautionary tale that warns against the dangers of 
indulging the excuse of the white male crisis against social injustice. While I would 
agree that this is true, this view ignores the fact that capitalism is already committing 
“violence against racial, sexual, and classical minorities,” and that Bateman is merely 
a stand-in and an extreme expression of what capitalism is already doing. Therefore, 
the confession that follows shows that there is no solution or escape from capitalism. 
When Bateman confronts his lawyer to whom he had previously confessed and who 
tells him it is impossible that he killed Paul Owen, Bateman responds, “‘I chopped 
Owen’s fucking head off. I tortured dozens of girls. That whole message I left on your 
machine was true’” (Ellis 388). Instead of believing him, though, Ellis shows exactly 
how interchangeable people in society are when he reveals that Owen cannot be dead 
“‘[b]ecause... I had... dinner... with Paul Owen... twice... in London... just ten days 
ago’” (388). Ellis depicts how the people of Wall Street—just like Bateman’s victims—
are also valueless in capitalism. They are interchangeable just like a cog in a machine 
that can be swapped out with another identical part.  
 Ellis establishes that whether or not Owen is alive is irrelevant because either 
he has been replaced by someone who serves the same function or Bateman killed 

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someone whom he believed was Owen, but either way the machine of capitalism 
hums on. Therefore, Bateman’s confession is meaningless because his crimes mean 
nothing in the end. They are all a part of the endless violence of capitalism that will 
not end with Bateman, which is demonstrated in the very last words of the novel: 
“THIS IS NOT AN EXIT” (Ellis 399). In other words, the end of the novel is not an 
end to the system that Bateman is a representation of. There is no escape or “exit” 
from the violence of capitalism. In doing this, Ellis creates a space within the crime 
fiction genre to allow for critique, especially within the justice system and how it is 
corrupted by capitalism. Just like Bateman, the wealthy, white upper class gets away, 
while everyone else suffers at their hands.  
 Through the portrayal of Patrick Bateman, Ellis depicts several facets of a 
serial killer and methodically relates each one to capitalism devaluing individuals 
and creating violence in the form of economic terror. Akin to the way that the 
capitalist machine chews up its victims and spits them out, so does Bateman, which 
is portrayed in the way that Ellis characterizes him as a process killer. His victims are 
all members of the “less dead,” who are people who have already lost at the game 
of capitalism until he reaches Paul Owen—a member of his own class. Ellis does 
this to show how eventually, everyone loses their identity because capitalism only 
values measurable output. Finally, Bateman’s last killing spree and confession reflect 
how there is no escape from the system that America has created. This is a fact that 
remains hauntingly true as we consider the most recent events and the economic 
despair that continues to grow in our country, which reminds us that there is never 
an exit. 

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