Hippies

One reason Las Vegas holds a special meaning to Raoul Duke stems from his involvement in the “hippie” counter-culture of the ‘60s. The movement centered around San Francisco and California and many of those involved hoped that this new culture would spread across the entire United States and defeat the old, evil forces of hatred and war. But for some reason, it never really escaped California.
If San Francisco symbolized all that was right about the new culture, Las Vegas represents all that is wrong with the old culture. It is a place where people have an unrestrained self-interest and don’t care about others or morality. Duke seems to almost blame Las Vegas for stopping the spread of the counter-culture. “…we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost [i]see[/i] the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back,”(68) Thompson writes. Perhaps it was Raoul Duke’s involvement in that new culture which engendered in him this disgust of the people and culture of Las Vegas. The hippies may have been just as decadent as the people of Las Vegas, but at least they were fighting for the right reasons.

The Fuzz

Raoul Duke’s fast-living druggie way of life has led him to adopt a very anti-authoritarian viewpoint as far as the law is concerned. Raoul speaks of the police with great contempt, calling them “pigs” (93) and “bastards”(92). He feels that these policemen not only enforce stifling restrictions, but they take pride in doing it. After being pulled over by a cop on Highway 61, Raoul is disgusted at the thought that the cop would shortly be off, chuckling to his friends about this drunken madman he had pulled over.
Duke is put into direct confrontation with the cops when he is assigned to a new story: the National Conference of District Attorneys Seminar on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Duke is delighted by the chance to be in the heart of what he sees as an evil machine. Perhaps, he thinks, he will be doing some of the dangerous drugs as the district attorneys speak about them. Upon checking in at his new hotel, Duke enjoys watching a bellhop tell one of the visiting cops that there were no vacancies left in the hotel; he would have to go elsewhere. Duke enjoys this because it is a reversal of roles. Usually, it would be the cop enforcing rules against someone like the bellhop. But seeing the cop get a taste of his own medicine is deeply entertaining to Duke.

Circus-Circus

Raoul Duke speaks about the gamblers of Las Vegas with contempt. He claims that, “The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on a Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war,”(46). He describes a feeling of complete sensory overload in the casinos: intense, high-stakes gambling on the floor and amazing acrobatic acts and wild animals on the upper floors (The Circus-Circus was apparently set up so that people gambling on the first floor could watch live acts).
And yet, in a strange way, Raoul sees the Circus-Circus as an embodiment of Raoul Dukes’ conception of the American Dream. The Circus-Circus is a collection of people seeking pleasure and not caring about morals or decency. However, reading Duke’s criticisms of these people, it is clear that there is a certain hypocrisy. Duke and Dr. Gonzo are just as, if not more, pleasure-seeking than the gamblers. Even as they are in the casino criticizing the decadent nature of these people, they are high on mescaline. As a result, it is difficult for the reader to truly determine what Duke’s judgment of the American Dream really is.

A central symbol of [i]Fear and Loathing[/i] is the “Great Red Shark”, the hot red convertible Raoul and Dr. Gonzo rent at the beginning of their trip. At first, it is a symbol of freedom for the men. It is the American Dream in the form of a car. But as things change for Raoul in Las Vegas, it takes on a darker side. It becomes the failed promise of that dream and becomes an object of fear and anxiety. The reason for this is that Raoul and Dr. Gonzo had stocked the Shark full of drugs, booze, soap, and grapefruit. The soap and grapefruit would not be incriminating in and of themselves, but the other items become objects of increasing anxiety for Raoul Duke, especially once he is forced to abandon his hotel and his bill, making him a fugitive.

This represents an important duality of the American dream. One side is the importance of freedom and the pursuit of happiness, which is the spirit in which Duke first rented the car. But the other side is the corruption and fear which comes with a self-interested craving for pleasure in the forms of drugs, alcohol, and greed. This is the side of the American Dream which Raoul and Dr. Gonzo have come to see.

Drugs

Sorry, I haven’t done a blog in a while. But now that I’m back, I feel that I can relate to Thompson’s writing a lot better than I could previously, since I’ve had senioritis for two full months now and it’s a lot like a drug, I think.

Why do Raoul Duke and his attorney use drugs? It can hardly be to escape pain and suffering; these two seem to suffer the most when they are using the drugs. Raoul is tormented by bats and killer reptiles when he takes drugs and his attorney almost kills himself during one previously hectic episode involving a bathtub and a radio. Thompson writes, “…after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in your teeth…But nobody can handle that other trip reality,” (47).

No, if these men wanted less fear and suffering, they would stay away from drugs altogether. Instead, what they are seeking is an escape from reality. It doesn’t matter that drugs make them see terrible things because at the end of the day, they know that every horror they saw was imagined. The horrors of the real world aren’t so easy to write off. They must be accepted as truths and dealt with.

The American Dream

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,”(3). So begins Hunter S. Thompson’s epic quest to the center of the American Dream, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Raoul Duke and his Samoan attorney, Doctor Gonzo, are sent to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 400, an annual race. Upon hearing of his assignment, Duke uses the $300 expense account he had been given by his employer to rent a red convertible and load it up with every type of drug he could get his hands on. Raoul and his attorney are perpetually high, even while driving. Raoul hallucinates, at various times, that he is being attacked by bats and that giant lizards have gone on a bloody rampage in the hotel lobby. But it is not yet clear why Raoul and his attorney use drugs so heavily. Is it an escape from harsh realities? Are they addicts? Time will tell.

It is also unclear just how Thompson will go about exploring the American Dream. Duke appears to be rather sure that his covering the Mint 400 has some obvious relation to the American Dream, but it does not appear to be a connection that is obvious to…normal people, at least not yet. According to Duke, the story he will write is, “Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas,”(12). But Duke’s conception of the American Dream seems so different from its common perception, that is, prosperity and the ability to improve oneself, that it is hard for me to understand. His American Dream seems to have something to do with driving fast in a convertible and doing loads of drugs. Perhaps, then, freedom is Duke’s American Dream—freedom from authority and the normal bounds of human thought. It will be interesting to see how Thompson accentuates this over the course of the book.

In Conclusion

The Angels were a group of people left behind by society. They were losers, people with no skills and no drive to be successful. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society had left them behind. The Angels had no place in this new world and instead of trying to work within the system and trying to change things so that they could succeed, they decided to leave society all together, to form their own societies outside of American Culture where they could be free. They are like urban Vikings who frighten normal elements of society and pillage their towns, just looking for thrills and self-centered satisfaction.

But loyalty is also a tremendous part of life for the Angels. They despise the two-facedness of people in everyday society, so they formed a clan of brothers with a strict social code which makes two-facedness impossible: either one is at peace with the Angels and respects the Angel way of life, or he is at war against it and insults it. The latter case inevitably results in a savage beating from the Angels. This was the fate that befell Hunter S. Thompson. The Angels became convinced that he was writing his book without giving fair tribute to the Angels—that he was using them. Perceiving this as an insult to the clan, one Angel suddenly and without warning punched Thompson, triggering a mass attack involving at least five Angels. Thompson suffered a broken rib and never returned to outlaw motorcycling.

Next week, I’m starting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson’s most famous work.