Otherness In American Psycho And The Outsider

Introduction: In American Psycho and The Outsider, to experience the Absurd is to experience Otherness, and within both film and novel it is absurdity and the Absurd which drives Mersault and Bateman towards their respective social alienations. However, despite the inextricable link between the Absurd and Otherness within the texts, the means by which the Absurd interacts with each text, and, in turn results in alienation is unique. Within Camus’s novel, the world itself is portrayed as being oppressive, with harsh landscapes and indifferent characters leaving Mersault feeling judged and persecuted, quite literally The Outsider. Conversely, Patrick Bateman, by all accounts has the success he has sought after, the consumerist strappings of
It is this philosophy of matter which starts to govern and define Bateman’s actions, however, in the same way that Mersault is governed by the sun and the world around him, Bateman, too, is governed, but by his inability to truly connect with the world which forces him to contend with the reality that he is not as important as he might believe. The Outsider therefore uses the banality of life to construe the Absurd, evoking a world in which the death of Mersault’s mother is perceptually hollow, leaving a void which is exemplified through the retelling of the phrase ‘you only get one mother,’ this line exposes the rift between expectation and actuality, a rift which resembles the ‘cleavage’ of the Absurd observed by Sartre ; this rift, or cleavage exists because something that should have a profound impact upon Mersault and the novel has next to none at all, and, it is this contradictory meaninglessness which begins to embody the Absurd; Mersault’s world is one without any form of higher purpose , or, what Camou describes as a world ‘divested of illusions.’ In juxtaposition to this, Bateman is given a higher purpose, through both consumerism and matter, which are
Indeed, ‘the sun was already so hot… [That it] felt like a slap across the face,’ here the power of the world around Mersault is so great that it is able to assault him, Mersault is therefore so confined by the world that he is left isolated by it and segregated from it. Indeed it is the combination of this persecution and oppression which Others him, with his brief, stunted narration leaving no other avenues for the expression of his character within the novel, Mersault is left in a situation in which he is arrested by his environment, struggling for a sense of both control and meaning, whilst forced at the same time to participate in what he perceives as the meaningless ceremonies of life. For example, his apathy towards the death of his mother, which is expressed at the beginning of the novel, ‘My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.’ The language used by Camus restricts Mersault, the range of emotion expressed and experienced throughout the novel is incredibly basic, limited mostly to ‘it was very hot,’ or ‘I found it difficult to wake up’ . Such expositions do not grant the reader the ability to truly empathise with Mersault, they serve to segregate his character into an impermeable place in which the world happens to Mersault and the reader is separated from this world by Mersault’s inaccessible language. Within The Outsider Mersault constantly feels out of place, at the