Cannibalism (Metaphor)
Patrick's cannibalism is a metaphor for his hyper-consumerist appetites and seemingly insatiable drive to acquire power and dominate others, primarily women. Patrick's gruesome mutilation and consumption of his victims' bodies signifies in a perverse way his attempt to, as he puts it, "get to know these girls." Patrick's cannibalistic appetites also at times evoke vampirism, given the way he bites women during sex on multiple occasions. Patrick's cannibalism also conveys in a larger sense the way in which wealthy, elite "yuppies" prey on the immiseration of the poor and homeless, whose welfare they callously disregard.
Cigar smoking (Metaphor)
Patrick's cigar use is a metaphor that reveals his entrenchment in the narcissistic habits of male bachelorhood. He and his Pierce & Pierce colleagues are constantly smoking cigars in bars like Harry's and Nell's while engaging in misogynist conversations. When Evelyn tries roping Patrick into a conversation about marriage over dinner one night, Patrick demurs and lights a cigar. Ironically, Patrick detests cigarettes, and scolds others around him who smoke them. Given that cigars are more stereotypically masculine than cigarettes, Patrick's disdain for them seems rooted in nothing more than petty sexism.
Like in a movie... (Simile)
Patrick often narrates events by comparing them to cinematic images, as he does on the first page of the book: "Like in a movie, another bus appears, another poster for Les Miserables..." Patrick's recourse to cinematic aesthetics suggests that he is describing—or "directing"—a fantasy world, rather than dealing with reality. It also reflects the fact that Patrick, an avid cinephile, has a voyeuristic obsession with glittering and seductive surfaces, even if they are false.
Blindness (Metaphor)
American Psycho uses the metaphor of blindness in several different ways. In a literal sense, Patrick blinds several of his victims by gouging their eyes out—a violent act that physically represents the obliteration of vision and perception. Many characters including Patrick seem selectively blind to the world around them—unable to recognize faces and happy to ignore the suffering and the homeless around them in New York City. Courtney and Evelyn seem "blind" to Patrick's cruelty; Evelyn, for instance, fails to notice when Patrick drowns their pet dog in the Hamptons.
Hell (Metaphor)
Ellis makes clear from the novel's opening lines, which quote Dante's Inferno, that Wall Street is a kind of Hell. Timothy Price's monologue, which invokes a number of grisly crimes reported in the daily tabloid newspaper, makes New York City at the end of the 1980s seem as derelict and forsaken as the inner circles of Dante's Hell itself. Patrick realizes at the U2 concert that he may be "the devil," and worships Donald Trump, who under the logic of this metaphor, becomes a sort of Satanic leader figure that Patrick aspires to become.
