Consuming and Consumed People. Violence in American Psycho

Florian Burkhardt

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9783638435499
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2, 0, University of Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: Bret Easton Ellis'American psychohas been a highly controversial book. Many critics condemned this novel before it had been published so Ellis even had to search for a new publishing company. The indignation atAmerican psychohad been so fierce, it verged on hysteria and some interest groups (feminist and religious groups for instance)agitated against the author and his work1. The main reason why critics reacted that outraged was the explicit and detailed description of violence in this book2. In this paper I will discuss the appearence of violence inAmerican psycho.But first I want to create a picture of social phenomena in the USA of the 80's as they are described in the novel, in order to provide the setting, the atmosphere in which the violence takes place. This will help to give an opinion of this violence and to interpret it. Then I will discuss how violence is presented in the text. In the fourth