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.
1 comment:
Yeah, my senioritis hit me pretty hard too. I like how you compared it to a drug. What I never understood was why people took drugs when they knew that it only lasts for a couple of minutes. I see no point in putting harmful poisons in the human body. I feel that they should man up and stand up to reality.
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