Good Manners, Bad Show
“Arnold Jackson was impudent—there was no other word for it—and his callousness, whether assumed or not, was outrageous.”
The irony here is that Arnold Jackson is the recipient of these unspoken insults on the part of Bateman Hunter for doing a terrible, terrible thing. Jackson has been polite, gracious, honest about his term in prison, and all topped by playing the perfect host to a lavish island feast to which Bateman has been invited. The much deeper irony, of course, is that Bateman clings so tightly to hypocritical ideas of high society etiquette that he is simply incapable of recognizing the real thing when it plays out right before his eyes.
Bateman’s Racism
The whole secondary point of Bateman going on a business trip to Tahiti in the first place is to “save” his friend Edward Barnard from a fate worse than death: finding happiness without conspicuous consuming it. He is never comfortable there and always appears to be out of place because to his mind, nothing anywhere on earth can possibly exceed the white American democratic capitalist patriarchy. His problem, as it always is for such specimens, is that he can’t quite conceive of any white American male not feeling exactly the same. And so the irony of his response to Isabel’s observation that Edward is splendid, made without ironic intent or recognition:
"He's white, through and through."
This Just In: Bateman in a Nutshell
Very early on—within the first paragraph—Bateman’s basic character is delineated through descriptive prose. Because we do not really know him yet, all of this psychological insight must be taken at face value. As a result, what turns out to be one of the ironic single sentences in the story may not immediately strike a reader as being so:
“Self-sacrifice appealed so keenly to his imagination that the inability to exercise it gave him a sense of disillusion.”
The irony is that he reveals himself throughout action and thought to be the type of person distinctly unsuited for any genuine sort of self-sacrifice. Or, to be it more simply, the line should read “Bateman Hunter is a jerk and a knee-biter.”
Isabel Matters
Before setting off to bring Edward back, Bateman must deliver the shocking news he has learned about his best friend to his best friend’s girl: that he was fired from his job over a year ago for laziness and incompetence. This inspired Isobel to confess something deeply disturbing she had begun noticing about her fiancé since arriving in Tahiti:
“One would almost think that the things that matter--well, don't matter.”
Says the woman whose final thoughts in the story are consumed with such lofty ambitions as buying antique furniture, hosting dinner parties at which only the most cultured Chicagoans (both of them!) would be invited, and being the center of attention at concerts performed at her exquisite house. Oh, and getting Bateman a pair of horn spectacles as soon as they are wed.
The Racist Knee-Biter’s Not ALL Bad
Very few men are all bad. Even the worst usually have at least one quality that might inspire a lower level of admiration. And Bateman is far from being the worst. He is a jerk and a knee-biter, to be sure, but ironically his finest character attribute is genuinely worthy of respect and, adding to the irony, it is revealed character virtue that is, in itself, quite ironic. While in Tahiti on his probably what will be the one true mission of self-sacrifice undertaken in his life, Bateman sincerely does try to woo Edward back home even though he knows that should he succeed, he will lose forever any shot he might possibly still have at winning Isabel for himself. Of course, leave it to Bateman to taint even this moment of glory by inflating his mission into martyrdom for himself:
“Bateman, with a bleeding heart, exulted at the prospect of giving happiness to the two persons he loved best in the world at the cost of his own. He would never marry.”
(He will, of course, marry Isabel because he fails miserably in his one genuine attempt to exert pressure upon the forces of good as he perceives them within his perverse worldview.)
