Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas Essay

, Research Paper

Finding the American Dream in Sin City:

What I got out of Fear and Loathing

Where do I start ? This book left me with so many questions and so many

things

to think about. Was this journey real? Was Hunter S. Thompson drawing off

real life

experinces to create this strange and insightful journey? If this was stricly

a fictional story

this is obivoiusly written by a man who had alot of experince with drugs and

there effects.

I don not want to focus on the drugs because I think there is more to this

book and if you

just focus and the outlandish number of drugs ingested by Raoul Duke and his

attorney

you will miss it. The book bills itself as "A savage journey to the

heart of the American

Dream." That is exactly what it is. We see america through a man who

seems to have

seen what America could have been only to see it come crashing down to the

harsh

realties of what it is. He was not alone in this feeling he makes it clear

when he remarks

that Nixons term marked the popularuty of downers. The whole country was in a

down

mood it seemed that everything had failed and the people that were left after

the smoke of

the sixties cleared felt dislousined and out of place like Raoul Duke. The

only feeling he

had left to cling on from this time was the drugs and even the highs didn’t

seem the same.

Take for example when he was describing being in San Francisco during the

Acid Wave

how carefree and innoceent his high nights seemed compare this with the

constant

parnonia that plagued him throughout his five day romp through Vegas. His

highs along

with america had lost a sense of innocence All that was left was a feeling of

fear and

loathing.

I also belive that the choice of Las Vegas as the hunting ground for the

Amercian

Dream was extremely important. I think that for many Vegas especially circa

1971

embobied all that was right and very wrong with American Culture. The tacky