1. Tyler Myers
4120-01
McIntire
American Psycho-delic Grammar
In a book about a corporate serial killer, you’d think the grammar usage would be
organized, clean, and neat. Just like a serial killer in real life; however, for, cocaine-slinging
author, Brett Easton Ellis, that is not the case. Normally, authors use grammar to emphasize and
accentuate their points and subjects with what components that their grammatical choices have
given, but in the case of Ellis’ novel American Psycho, it does not only make bold decisions by
its present tropes and schemes, but by those that are absent, as well. In this novel about serial
killer/corporate accountant, Patrick Bates, it is not only the schemes and tropes that Mr. Ellis has
chosen to put in place, but it also gets much of its message across from the blatant disregard for
other grammatical components and how the ones he chooses to use become just as animated in
the story as the characters themselves.
Whenever an author uses a grammatical scheme to create a flow and rhythm within their
sentences, it’s because of their carefully created equation put into writing a novel or story of
their own. In American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis’ decisions in choosing certain tropes in his
creation give his story a mind of its own when it comes just as close to telling the story as the
words, themselves. Certain components such as the author’s excessive use of things like
polysendeton, anastrophe, and chiasmus give Ellis’ words and sentences their own ebb and flow

2. that walks the reader through a scene as if they were watching a movie, as opposed to reading
words on a page.
Right as the section simply entitled “Morning” begins, the reader is immersed in a steady
sea of commas giving a rhythm as slow and certain as the exact routine narrated in the story.
Even just with the first taste, given when describing a painting, the reader is given the
experience, the journey, the brilliance. Just, like, this. One could either assume that the writer
had something on their comma key and that while they were in the middle of writing this scene
they just couldn’t help but pick at it and consequently put several commas within these sentences
and afterwards, they just decided, “eh. Oh well.” Or you could go with the much more
believable notion that the author, instead, chose to utilize these commas to give their statements
the choppy flow that worked with them oh so well. When you think about morning routines, it’s
a lot of performing one action, stopping, and then doing something else. This occurs until you’re
ready to go wherever it is you desire to be and to give this familiar feel of getting ready for the
day, Brett Easton Ellis uses commas to create this certain mood within his world of words that he
would, otherwise, not be able to do. In the same sense, Ellis also uses a combination of the trope
of anastrophe with another rhetorical element known as primacy to accentuate what are meant to
be important to main character, Bates. By using the strategy of initial repetition with the purpose
to leave you remembering the first part of a statement to get his readers to empathize with
Patrick Bateman’s ideas of what are important. Used in concurrence with primacy and
anastrophe, Ellis also pushes the influence of chiasmus to place the subject of a sentence at the
beginning of the phrase to introduce what is most important to the greedy Bates to the reader so

3. they can quickly realize its great value to the scene at hand. Yet, no matter how important these
tropes are, something equally important to the painted picture that is “Morning,” are the lack of
tropes that aren’t present within this section for what they do to the scene, as well.
When you’re friends with someone short, you don’t look at them and think to yourself,
“Gee, I really like them because they lack height,” but, interestingly enough, this is what one can
gather from this early scene from Ellis’ American Psycho. Or at least, in a sense. Maybe a better
analogy would be to say that someone would enjoy a computer because it lacks viruses. Maybe.
Regardless, something that sets this author’s use of grammar apart from others, is its ability to
create its own personal brand of setting a scene and giving it mood by what it chooses to leave
out, such as its choice to leave out various climaxes that could exist in sentences. Statements
given throughout this section of a violent tale of corporate jealousy and greed could very easily
be exciting. How could the morning routine of a bloodthirsty man not interesting? But instead of
choosing to go for the crazy roller coaster that reading a paragraph about brushing teeth could be,
Brett Easton Ellis instead chooses to plateau these statements in a constant wasteland of
monotonousness; just like a normal morning routine.
Morning routines, at least usually, don’t result in the casual thrill that is normally given
to scenes in books to keep readers interested that are distributed throughout stories, except within
American Psycho, at least not within this particular scene. This is no mistake. The lack of
climaxes within these various sentences about face masks and wrinkle solutions is no accident,
but instead a full-fledged choice to keep the scene realistic. With the conscious decision to keep

4. a regular scene grounded, the reader now understands how believable this novel is, something
they will keep in mind when the main character later decides to kill a homeless man after
mocking him for being homeless which, in turn, further emphasizes Ellis’ point of corporations
being the biggest evil to mankind, making it a handy grammatical tool and smart decision in
terms of storytelling.
But it is not just words that tell stories, it is also people that read them. But with the
skillful use of grammar’s tools by Brett Easton Ellis, that allow the words themselves to become
as animated as the characters in the story to tell a story of their own. By nixing the use of
pronouns almost altogether throughout Bateman’s morning sequence and repeating the subject
by name nearly every time it is mentioned, the reader is practically hit over the head with how
important it is meant to be. This tactic mixed with the use of passive voice to practically give
certain objects autonomous abilities, allows the objects to practically become an actor in the
current scene and the reader is able to watch them act out their parts. A very odd, but unique
experience is possible to be had when Brett Easton Ellis shows his full power of creating a scene,
giving a mixture of different new components to be experienced all at once, in full in a burst of
several tropes and schemes mixed together in a potpourri of grammatical tools.
Though Brett Easton Ellis uses his authorial talents to create oddly satisfying scenes such
as “Morning” not only from the beginning of the story, but also throughout, it is not a bad style
to read. In fact, this refreshing use of hybrid tropes to create a wonderfully tasteful, yet strangely
refreshing sense of writing is more than welcome as a new experience in the world of literature

5. and, while it is most certainly not a conventional style used to craft works of writing, it is
definitely an enjoyable one. In terms of being able to manipulate the likes of grammar to do just
as much to portray one’s ideas as the words and ideas themselves, Ellis does more than most can
all while maintaining a creative narrative and progressive story that can keep its audience
entertained by content just as well as entranced by grammatical prowess. So how should
American Psycho stand in terms of simply “good” or “bad” based on its use of rhetorical
elements in grammar? It should be considered neither. It is much more. It is tasteful, well
organized, and skillful in several different aspects. It is psycho-delic.