American Inequality in American Psycho Essay

Set in the Manhattan of 1989, Brett Easton Elliss novel the Statesn psychotic person sketches the life of Patrick Bateman, an attractive 26-year-old Harvard graduate who earns a six-figure income on Wall avenue. Bateman and his common ivy League educated friends enjoy all the luxury Manhattan has to offer, including expensive restaurants, scoop shovel nightclubs and excessive amounts of cocaine. However, what their money, education and beauty truly affords them is the right to humiliate, harass, and in Batemans case to kill, those in the social classes beneath them. The satirical, yet horrific, story that unfolds throughout American Psycho highlights the inequality between the richest and poorest Americans, a gap that widened easily in the 1980s thanks in part to the economic policies of Ronald Reagan.In addition to reducing the measure rate on wealthy Americans from 70% to 28%, President Reagan authorized deregulation that encouraged corporate mergers and do cuts to social pro grams that left all over many Americans roofless (Foner 1037). By reducing the tax rate, Reagan intended to encourage sound private investments thereby creating jobs. However, many ample Americans used the money saved in taxes to purchase luxury products instead. bodily mergers, or more bluntly corporate takeovers, spurred the deindustrialization of America. While deindustrialization eliminated many high-paying manufacturing jobs and left several Americans unemployed, the corporate takeovers that spurred the deindustrialization created a tremendous amount of wealth on Wall Street. Reagan also reduced funds allotted for public caparison and psychiatric hospitals. This fiscal decision only increased the number of roofless individuals across America, especially in urban areas such as refreshed York city (Foner 1037-40).Throughout American Psycho Batemans Wall Street cohorts address the rampant homelessness in Manhattan with a mixture of contempt and amusement. In the first pag es of the novel, Timothy Price, a young stockbroker on his way uptown, complains approximately his six-figure income as he counts the thirtieth homeless person he has seen that day (3-7). Leaving an exclusive nightclub, Craig McDermott, a nonher rich stockbroker, teases a homeless womanhood and her child with a bingle dollar bill before climb it on fire (210). Bateman, however, is more sadistic than his friends are. Before mutilating and killing a homeless man, Bateman offers the man money but asks him why he does not get a job. When the man says he was laid off, Bateman asks rhetorically, Do you entail its fair to take money from people who do entertain jobs? Who do work? (129-30)The text contains a strong theme of affable Darwinism. Bateman and his friends do not feel a twinge of guilt over their manipulation of those less fortunate because they adhere to the belief that the underclass deserves the mistreatment bon ton allots them, just as the privileged are entitled to th e special treatment society grants them. Although Ellis addresses the gap between the rich and poor in America through mordant satire, his depiction of the yuppie lifestyle and how the homeless are do by is not entirely hyperbolic. While on vacation in revolutionary York City, I observed the hostile and often indifferent treatment the homeless receive. In the financial district of Manhattan only blocks from Wall Street, I axiom a young, well-dressed professional woman nearly bump into a homeless man and, after glaring at him for a moment, remarked, Youve got to be kidding me.In Patrick Batemans world, a world where the privileged enjoy a plush-like lifestyle, no one asks why. Their sense of entitlement overrides their curiosity, so that not a single character asks why the homeless line the streets. In the preface to American Psycho Ellis quotes a lyric from a Talking Heads song that reads, And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention. In that novel, and perhaps foreign it, things fell apart, and nobody paid much attention.Works CitedEllis, Brett. American Psycho. inaugural ed. New York City Vintage, 1991. Print.Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty 2nd ed. Vol. 2. New York City W. W. &Norton, 2007. 1037-140. Print.