The Rules of Attraction
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The Rules of Attraction is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis published in 1987 and made into a film in 2002.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The novel is told from a multiple first-person point of view. The main narrators are three students: Paul, Sean and Lauren. A number of other characters also provide first-hand accounts throughout the story, which takes place at the fictional Camden College. The three main characters end up in a love triangle, amid End of the World parties, drug runs, and classes never attended.
The story begins part of the way through a sentence in order to give the effect that it begins somewhere closer to the middle, rather than at a true beginning. Another interpretation is that the story has neither a beginning nor an ending, which signifies the endless cycle of debauchery in which the characters of the novel engage. This is sometimes mistaken by readers as a typo or the result of a missing page, but in truth it was purposely done by Ellis. The novel also ends in a similar fashion, with the last sentence cut off before it ends.
Major themes of the novel include the death of romance, the materialism of the time period, the hopeless feeling dominating the characters life in college, and the heavy use of drugs and fantasy to deal with real life problems.
[edit] Main characters
- Sean Bateman - has slept with many of the girls on campus. He has fallen in love with Lauren, whom he believes shares the same sentiments; meanwhile he has been getting letters from a young lady known only by the italic texts in the novel. He has a relationship with Paul during the novel, which may or may not be sexual since these encounters are often omitted from his daily entries. He impregnates Lauren and plans to marry her, but they later call it off. His relationship with Lauren dominates a large portion of the text and is the centerpiece of many themes.
- Lauren Hynde - a virgin upon entering university, who was saving herself for an upperclass drama major, Daniel Miller. The first page of the novel begins with her recounting her first time, which was the first weekend of Freshman year: "and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that." She is sexually active throughout the novel (not so in the film, in which she is a virgin), and eventually takes an interest in Sean, who believes that she is writing him love notes. Spends most of the novel missing Victor and believing that her life would be better if they could be together, grasping on to a fantasy of how she thinks life would be better if she could be with him.
- Paul Denton - a bisexual guy who used to date Lauren. He is attracted to Sean, but doesn't know if he also likes him or not. He references the fact that they frequently have sex where Sean is "crazed, an untamed animal, it was almost scary" despite the fact that these accounts are entirely absent from Sean's entries. The details of this relationship remain ambiguous. Paul has also had relationships with two important characters Mitchell and Richard (Dick).
[edit] Other characters
- Victor Johnson — Lauren's boyfriend. Leaving her waiting for his return, Victor has left to go backpacking through Europe, where he is highly promiscuious and behaves wildly. Due to his carefree lifestyle (and asides with other girls — and guys) in Europe, he returns to school being unable to remember Lauren. He becomes the main character of the later Ellis novel, Glamorama, though has changed his name to Victor Ward.
- Clay - Clay is the protagonist of Less Than Zero, aka "the guy from L.A.".
- Patrick Bateman — Patrick is Sean's older brother, a successful investment banker who is seemingly much more focused and successful than Sean. The brothers loathe each other for their very different outlooks on life. As it turns out in Ellis's follow-up novel, American Psycho, Patrick is a psychopathic serial killer.
- Unnamed female student — We learn about her that she loves Sean and puts anonymous love notes in his mailbox. She ultimately commits suicide by slitting her wrists in a bathtub when she realizes that Sean will never be interested in her. Ironically she doesn't seem to realize that Sean's interest in Lauren is triggered by Sean's mistaken belief that the love notes are from Lauren.
[edit] Camden College
Camden College is a fictional liberal arts college in northeastern New Hampshire. In many aspects of college life it seems to mirror Ellis's own alma mater, Bennington College and also the setting of Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History, Hampden College. Both books contain tacit cross-references to each other's story lines and characters. Tartt mentions the suicide of a freshman girl in passing, while Ellis repeatedly mentions a segregated group of classics majors who "dress like undertakers" and are suspected of staging pagan rituals and slaying farmers in the countryside.
[edit] Movie adaptation
The Rules of Attraction was adapted into a film of the same name in 2002. It was directed by Roger Avary and starred James Van Der Beek as Sean, Shannyn Sossamon as Lauren, Ian Somerhalder as Paul, and Kip Pardue as Victor.
[edit] Significant changes from the book
As with many adaptations from one medium to another, many changes were made to The Rules of Attraction. These include:
- An implementation of a "beginning is the end," plot structure, where we are introduced to the characters at a party which is chronologically at the end of the events of the movie. The book is linear.
- The book takes place during the 1985-86 school year. The movie is updated to a more contemporary time period (though ambiguous).
- Many minor characters are eliminated (such as Clay, Roxanne and Franklin).
- Lauren Hynde being portrayed in the movie as an energetic virgin, while in the book she is seen sleeping with multiple partners.
- Lauren loses her virginity in the beginning of both versions. However, they are during different periods of time. In the novel it is recounted as taking place during her freshman year, while in the timeline of the movie it is after most of the events of the movie have taken place. However it is still under the same circumstances (semi-conscious with a local townie while a film student she was earlier flirting with films it with a camcorder. )
- A new character, Lara, is added as Lauren's roommate. She is highly promiscuous and fills much of the role the version of Lauren from the novel used to.
- Lauren and Sean never date, nor have sex, in the movie. Or if they do, we do not see it, because at one point, Lauren says, "It's over."
- In the novel, Sean and Paul's relationship (or lack of one) remains ambiguous. It is referenced in Paul's narrations, but not Sean's. The movie portrays this as a masturbation fantasy of Paul's while he stares at a passed out Sean. In the book, it is hinted that they had sex. It does not happen here.
- Lauren discovers the girl who committed suicide in the dorm bathroom, as opposed to Roxanne in the novel.
- Lauren never becomes pregnant, nor gets an abortion in the movie. The relating event (her and Sean going on a drug-laden road trip) also never occurs.
- Sections of the text from the novel are preserved, but are presented within a different context. Sean's description of having sex with Lauren for the first time in the novel, is then narrated in relation to the girl at the beginning of the movie.
- Sean never visits his dying father, nor physically encounters his brother, Patrick Bateman, in the movie, only mentioning him on the telephone (which happened in the book anyway).
- Although the love triangle happens simultaneously in the movie, Paul and Sean's relationship is ended when Lauren and Sean's begins at the Dressed to Get Screwed Party, half-way through the novel.
- The character of Mr. Lawson (Eric Stoltz) does not appear in the book. However in the book there is lecturer Sean is very suspicious of, Professor Vittorio who teaches poetry.
[edit] Editions
- ISBN 0-679-78148-X (paperback, 1998)
