Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

DANIEL COJOCARU

Confessions of an American Psycho: James Hogg’s and Bret Easton Ellis’ Anti-Heroes’ Journey from Vulnerability to Violence

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ABSTRACT

James Hogg in his Romantic masterpiece Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Brett Easton Ellis in his gruesome fin de siècle contemporary novel American Psycho shock their readers with the confessions of their mass-murdering anti-heroes Robert Wringhim and Patrick Bateman. Yet hidden beneath the graphic descriptions of American Psycho and the pseudo-apologetic narrative of Robert linger the fragile and vulnerable souls of both Protagonists. 

Both novels are portrayals of how their anti-heroes, because of their “greater moral and emotional sensitivity”[1], are continuously hurt by the intolerance and hostility of their respective social surroundings. In lack of a model of non-violence, however, they cannot escape the contagion of the societal indifference. To them, the only way to make themselves heard, is, by becoming the instruments of raw violence lurking behind that indifference and by unwittingly taking the masked tolerance to its full consequence, revealing it in acts of utterly dehumanizing violence, thus mirroring society’s cold heart. Finally, haunted by remorse, Patrick and Robert confess their ghastly crimes. Yet, society’s reaction to their confessions comes only to them as a surprise: nobody cares in worlds where tolerance equals “mind your own business”. Wringhim and Bateman are denied absolution, simply because there is no one caring enough to even faintly grasp what forgiveness means. Their revelatory insight in the end is that indifference is the very definition of hell. Thus Hogg’s and Easton Ellis’ grimly sarcastic comment on their respective societies seems to be that, while their mass-murderers are rightly suffering for their deeds, they are the only human beings left with a conscience.