Harvard Business School
Which school did Patrick Bateman go to from 1984 to 1988?
Patrick Bateman Patrick Bateman is a fictional character and the protagonist , as well as the narrator , of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis , and its film adaptation . He is a wealthy , materialistic Wall Street investment banker who leads a secret life as a serial killer . Bateman has also briefly appeared in other Ellis novels and their film and theatrical adaptations . Biography and profile . Bateman , at the beginning of American Psycho , is a 27-year-old specialist in mergers and acquisitions at the fictional Wall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce ( also Sherman McCoys firm in The Bonfire of the Vanities ) and lives at 55 West 81st Street , Upper West Side on the 11th floor of the American Gardens Building ( where he is a neighbor of actor Tom Cruise ) . In his secret life , however , Bateman is a serial killer murdering a variety of people , from colleagues to the homeless to prostitutes . His crimes—including rape , torture , necrophilia , and cannibalism—are graphically described in the novel . Bateman comes from a wealthy family . His parents have a house on Long Island , and he mentions a summer house in Newport . His parents divorced sometime earlier , while his mother became sick and now resides at a sanatorium . His father , who first appeared in Elliss preceding novel The Rules of Attraction , grew up on an estate in Connecticut , and now owns an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan . He is assumed to be dead as he is mentioned only in past tense during the novel . Batemans younger brother Sean attends Camden College ( and is a protagonist of Ellis previous novel , The Rules of Attraction , in which Patrick Bateman was first introduced ) . Bateman attended Phillips Exeter Academy for prep school . He graduated from Harvard College in 1984 and Harvard Business School two years later , and moved to New York City . By the end of the novel , he believes he is about to be arrested for murdering a colleague named Paul Owen and leaves a message on his lawyers answering machine confessing to his crimes . When he runs into his lawyer at a party , however , the man mistakes him for somebody else and tells him that the message must have been a joke , as he had met with Owen only days earlier . Bateman realizes that the punishment and notoriety he desires will be forever out of his reach and that he is trapped inside a pointless existence : This is not an exit . Personality . As written by Ellis , Bateman is the ultimate stereotype of yuppie greed ; rich , shallow , and addicted to sex , drugs , and conspicuous consumption . All of his friends look alike to him , to the point that he often confuses one for another ; they often confuse him for other people as well . Bateman takes delight in obsessively detailing virtually every single feature of his designer clothes , workout routine , business cards , alcoholic drinks , elaborate high-end stereo and home theater sound system . He is engaged to an equally rich , shallow woman named Evelyn Williams . He has a mistress on the side named Courtney Lawrence , a woman who is involved in his social circle , and has regular liaisons with sex workers and women he encounters at clubs , many of whom end up being his victims . The one woman ( and possibly the one person ) in his life for whom he has anything approaching feelings is his secretary , Jean . He feels that she is the only person in his life who is not completely shallow , so he cannot bring himself to seduce or kill her . He casually acknowledges her as Jean , my secretary who is in love with me and introduces her in the narration as someone whom he will probably end up married to someday . Despite his affluence and high social status , Bateman is wracked by feelings of insecurity and self-hatred . He kills many of his victims because they make him feel inadequate , usually by having better taste than he does . He is deeply disliked by others as well - his friends mock him as the boy next door ; his own lawyer refers to him as a bloody ass-kisser.. . a brown-nosing goody-goody ; and he is often dismissed as yuppie trash by people outside his social circle . Bateman often expresses doubts regarding his own sanity and he has periodic attacks of psychosis , during which he hallucinates . It is left open to interpretation whether Bateman actually commits the acts he describes , or whether he is merely hallucinating them ; he is , therefore , an unreliable narrator . In the climax of the story , Bateman calls his lawyer and leaves a lengthy , detailed message confessing all of his crimes . He later runs into his lawyer , who mistakes him for someone else and dismisses the confession as a joke , also claiming to have had dinner with one of his victims after Bateman had supposedly killed him , leaving the supposed reality of Batemans acts open to audience interpretation . Although Bateman often claims that he is devoid of emotion , he also describes experiencing moments of extreme rage , panic or grief—being on the verge of tears—often over trivial inconveniences such as remembering to return videotapes or trying to obtain dinner reservations . In the middle of dismembering a victim , he breaks down , sobbing that he just wants to be loved . He takes psychotropics , like Xanax , to control these emotions . He publicly espouses a philosophy of tolerance , equality and traditional moral values because he thinks it will make him more likeable , however he truly has no interest in any of the afore mentioned principles . Bateman compensates for his insecurities through obsessive vanity and personal grooming , with unwavering attention to detail . He buys the most fashionable , expensive clothing and accessories possible ( e.g. , Salvatore Ferragamo , Alan Flusser and Valentino suits , Oliver Peoples glasses and Jean Paul Gaultier , Louis Vuitton and Bottega Veneta leather goods ) as a means of effecting some control over his otherwise chaotic life . Likewise , he categorizes people by what they wear and how they look because they are more easily understood in terms of labels and stereotypes . Batemans apartment also is firmly controlled in terms of look and taste , with the latest music , food , and art . Bateman kills more or less indiscriminately , with no preferred type of victim and no consistent or preferred method of killing . Throughout the novel , he kills men , women , animals , and , in one instance , a child . Bateman murders women mostly for sadistic sexual pleasure , often during or just after sex . He kills men because they anger or annoy him or make him feel inferior . In the case of the child , Bateman wished to see if he would enjoy it , but found it unsatisfactory since the childs death would not affect as many people as an adults would . Periodically , he matter-of-factly confesses his crimes to his friends , co-workers , and even complete strangers ( I like to dissect girls , did you know Im utterly insane ) just to see if they are actually listening to him . They either are not , or they think that he is joking . Outside American Psycho . Bateman made his first appearance in Ellis 1987 novel The Rules of Attraction ( in which Sean , his brother , is a main character ) ; no indication is given that he is a serial killer . Bateman also makes a short appearance in Ellis 1998 novel Glamorama , with strange stains on the lapel of his Armani suit . Bateman also appeared in the American Psycho 2000 e-mails , which were written as an advertisement campaign for the movie . Although they are often mistakenly credited to Ellis , they were actually written by one or more unnamed authors and approved by Ellis before being sent out . American Psycho 2000 served as a sort of e-quel to the original novel . The e-mails take place in 2000 , a little over a decade since the novel . Bateman is in psychotherapy with a Dr . M . He is also married to Jean , his former secretary . They have a son , Patrick Bateman Jr . ( P.B. ) , who is eight years old . In the story , Bateman talks about therapy , trying to get a divorce from Jean , his renewed feelings about murder , and idolizing his son . In the end , it is revealed that the real Bateman , who writes the e-mails , is the owner of the company that produces the movie . Bateman appeared in Elliss 2005 novel Lunar Park , in which the fictionalised Bret Easton Ellis confesses that writing American Psycho felt like channeling the words of a violent spirit rather than writing anything himself . This ghost—Bateman—haunts Elliss home . A character also comes to Elliss Halloween party dressed as Patrick Bateman , and a copycat killer is seemingly patterning himself on Bateman . Toward the novels end , Ellis writes the last Bateman story as a way of confronting and controlling the character , as well as the issues Ellis created Bateman as a means of countering . Bateman , for all intents and purposes , dies in a fire on a boat dock . In the Showtime series Dexter , protagonist Dexter Morgan , himself a serial killer , uses the alias Dr . Patrick Bateman to acquire M-99 for the use of incapacitating his victims . There is a recurring character in the video game Criminal Case named Christian Bateman ( a combination of the names Christian Bale and Patrick Bateman ) modeled after the character . In film and on stage . Though Christian Bale had been the first choice for the part by both Ellis and Harron , the producers offered the part to Keanu Reeves , Edward Norton , and Brad Pitt . Leonardo DiCaprio was set to play the character , but Ellis ( as explained in the American Psycho DVD ) decided he would appear too young , especially immediately after Titanic . In addition , his managers thought the role was too violent and could potentially hurt his career . Bateman was also portrayed by Dechen Thurman , a brother of Uma Thurman , in the 2000 documentary This Is Not an Exit : The Fictional World of Bret Easton Ellis . Michael Kremko played Bateman in the spin-off American Psycho 2 , in which the character is killed by a would-be victim . Aside from the character appearing in the film , the sequel has no other connection to the previous film and has been denounced by Ellis . Scenes with the character were shot for the 2002 film adaptation of The Rules of Attraction . Ellis revealed in an interview that director Roger Avary asked Bale to reprise the role , but Bale turned down the offer , and Avary asked Ellis himself to portray Bateman . Ellis refused , stating that he thought it was such a terrible and gimmicky idea , and Avary eventually shot the scenes with Casper Van Dien . The scenes , however , were ultimately cut from the final version of the film . In a 2009 interview with Black Book , director Mary Harron said , We talked about how Martian-like [ the character ] Patrick Bateman was , how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet , watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave , and then one day [ Christian ] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman , and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes , and he was really taken with this energy . Doctor Who star Matt Smith played the role in the 2013 stage musical version of the novel , with music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa , at Londons Almeida Theatre . In 2016 , Benjamin Walker portrayed Bateman in a Broadway production of the musical , which ran from March 21-June 5 , 2016 . Chronology . - October 1962 : Patrick Bateman is born . - 1980 : Bateman graduates from Phillips Exeter Academy . - 1984 : Bateman graduates from Harvard University . - 1985 : Bateman has a short discussion with his estranged brother Sean about his future . - 1986 : Bateman graduates from Harvard Business School . - From the time of his graduation , through the end of American Psycho , Bateman works at Pierce & Pierce . - ca . 1996 : Bateman shows up at Victors club in Glamorama with strange stains on his suit . - 2000 : Bateman enters therapy with a Dr . M . This appears in the American Psycho 2000 e-mails . In these emails , he is divorcing Jean , to whom he has been married for at least five years , and with whom he has a son . He has started his own brokerage firm and seems to be wealthier than he was in the original novel . His tastes are even more refined . His homicidal tendencies ( or thoughts ) seem to have cooled a little with the birth of his son and have mellowed as he has gotten older , but have not disappeared completely . - 2003 : Ellis kills off Patrick Bateman by writing an account of the serial killer being trapped in a pier fire . See Lunar Park .