Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

“It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country.”

Raoul comments on the trip to Las Vegas Gonzo and himself are about to embark on. On one level, this can be read ironically, since their drug fuelled adventure seems to be the very antithesis of traditional notions of the American dream. On another level, they are following in the best, frontier pushing traditions of American life and literature, following in the tradition of the pioneers and writers like Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac.

“It was like trying to keep track of a swimming meet in an Olympic-sized pool filled with talcum powder instead of water.”

This is Raoul’s description of the problem with covering the Mint 400 race in the desert. As all the vehicles have created a huge cloud of dust, any attempt to conventionally observe the race, or who is winning, is impossible. On another level the cloud of dust serves as a metaphor for the limitations of conventional journalism, which looks to passively observe and describe events from a detached position. Such journalism, suggests Thompson, will always be blind to what is really going on inside the event.

“DON’T GAMBLE WITH MARIJUANA!”

This is the message on a billboard on the outskirts of Las Vegas. It also includes information about the extremely draconian punishments for possession and dealing of the drug. It exposes Las Vegas as a highly dangerous place for anyone like Raoul and Gonzo. At the same time, ironically in the spirit of Las Vegas, it highlights how risking being caught, and the high stakes involved, is part of the thrill.

“…you misjudge the distance to the turnstile and slam against it, bounce off and grab hold of an old woman to keep from falling… My name is Brinks; I was born… born?”

Raoul tries to enter the Circus-Circus casino after having taken ether. He is clearly not in control either of his body or his speech. Nevertheless, the casino staff let him in since they sense that, in this state, he will be easy to exploit.

“Stand in front of this fantastic machine, my friend, and for just 99 cents your likeness will appear, two hundred feet tall, on a screen above downtown Las Vegas.”

This is one of the many weird and wonderful attractions at the Circus-Circus, along with wolverines on trapeze. On one level, this reflects the surreal and novel amusements that are available in Las Vegas. On another level, it is a metaphor for the deeply narcissistic, ephemeral, and illusory nature of the attractions there.

“LAS VEGAS AT DAWN- The racers are still asleep, the dust is still on the desert, $50,000 in prize money slumbers darkly in the office safe at Del Webb’s fabulous Mint hotel... And our Life team is here (as always, with a sturdy police escort…).”

This is a parody of the kind of article that would be written in a conventional journalistic style about an event like the Mint 400. It implies some kind of deep connection to the heart of the event. However, beyond the pretentious rhetoric, there is merely a dull and vacuous description of objective facts. Worse, the journalists are protected from any real or risky engagement with the story by a police escort with whom they are complicit.

“Let it roll!... Just as high as the f***er can go! And when it comes to that fantastic note where the rabbit bites its own head off, I want you to throw that f***in radio into the tub with me.”

This is what Gonzo, while lying in the bath having taken a huge amount of LSD, tells Raoul to do. On the one hand, this shows how warped Gonzo’s mind has become under the influence of so much LSD. On the other hand, it shows Gonzo’s pursuit of an ultimate high connected to the joint crescendo of the music and the crescendo of life: death.

“…thinking just behind some narrow door in all his favorite bars, men in red Pendelton shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”

This is part of Raoul’s story about when he first started taking LSD. In a bar toilet, he spilt some on his sleeve and a musician started licking it off. This leads Raoul to imagine an ordinary person accidentally viewing this scene and imagining something utterly bizarre and depraved was going on. It also serves as a metaphor for part of the thrill of LSD in the 60s: knowing that it gave a person access to a world from which conformist and conventional people were excluded.

“This tension is part of the high. The possibility of physical and mental collapse is very real now…”

Raoul is driving back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas. He has not slept in three days and has taken a massive amount of drugs. He also realizes that while a physical or mental breakdown is becoming highly likely, to allow this would be catastrophic and land him in prison. As such, he teeters on the edge of collapse, desperately trying to assert some control. This state of tension, though, and the risk of collapse, forms a weird kind of high.

“I have just had two very bad emotional experiences- one with the California Highway Patrol and another with a phantom hitchhiker who may or may not have been who I thought it was.”

Raoul’s stated reason for returning to Las Vegas to cover the police narcotics conference, despite the huge risk involved, is that he saw, and was seen by, the hitchhiker he originally picked up. However, he acknowledges that it might not have even been the same person—or anyone at all. This suggests that Raoul had partially imagined the sight of the hitchhiker to justify returning to Las Vegas and enjoying the thrill of an even riskier and higher stakes enterprise at the police conference.

“That would be the danger point, he said- a sign that my body’s desperately overworked flushing mechanism had broken down completely.”

As noted throughout “Fear and Loathing” Raoul is constantly sweating. This is due, a doctor explains, to his body desperately trying to rid itself of the toxins and poisons he has put inside it. The real danger will come when he stops sweating and the body has given up entirely. This indicates the dire physical predicament Raoul is in and how close he is skating to physical breakdown and death.

“But who was the Hero of this filthy drama?”

After Lucy has called their hotel back when they thought they had gotten rid of her, Raoul believes that, like Othello, he is going to be doomed by a woman. He wonders though whether, given the tawdry nature of his actions, he can be considered as a “tragic hero”. At the same time, this comment is an allusion to the confusion of identity surrounding Raoul and Gonzo and the possibility that they may be two sides of the same person.

“The jury would know what we’d done. They would have read about people like us.”

Raoul imagines what would happen if Lucy became sober and told anyone about what happened. They would be arrested and would certainly be found guilty by a jury. This is because they would be judged according to all the worst stereotypes that people had been encouraged to believe about drug users—namely, that they are degenerates wilfully setting out to corrupt the minds and morals of the innocent.

“Every muscle in my body was contracted. I couldn’t even move my eyeballs…not even my lungs seemed to be functioning. I needed artificial respiration, but I couldn’t open my mouth to say so.”

This is what Raoul experiences after taking adrenochrome from a human adrenal gland. The intense effects temporarily paralyze and nearly kill him. This experience indicates the risks of what Raoul’s “Gonzo” approach to drugs entail. At the same time, it showcases, in an extreme way, one of the unspoken goals of taking drugs: to lose control.

“The Dope Fiend fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his command -including yours.’”

This is an imagined police bulletin about cannabis users. Given the actual effects of cannabis use, this warning is both ludicrous and totally ignorant. However, it can be used to legitimize police violence against cannabis users. It also shows how dangerous the lies and half-truths peddled about drug use in the narcotics conference can be.

“The owner of a gas station across the road said the place had ‘burned down about three years ago.’”

When saying in a diner that they are looking for the American Dream, Gonzo and Raoul are directed to somewhere called the “Old Psychiatrists Club.” This turns out to be a derelict slab of concrete with the club having burned down three years previously. Since this would put the year of the club’s destruction in 1968, it suggests that the burning of the “Old Psychiatrists Club” is a metaphor for the demise of 60s youth and drug culture and the idealism associated with it. The “Old Psychiatrist” name here is also a reference to Timothy Leary, the ex-Harvard psychologist who helped popularise LSD.

“I stopped at a red light and got lost, for a moment, in a sunburst of flesh in the crosswalk.”

After dropping Gonzo off at the airport, Raoul notices some attractive female college students crossing the road in front of him. On one level this might seem like a relatively trivial incident. However, given Raoul’s total lack of interest in sex and women previously, and the notion that Gonzo represents the instinctual side of him, it might suggest something more interesting. Perhaps Raoul has started to take on some of Gonzo’s attributes, and that the ego and the id of Thompson are becoming better aligned. This is also indicated by Raoul’s extreme risk taking and Gonzo’s fear, when Raoul drives Gonzo to the airport.

“The guy next to me had been in there for thirty years, for robbing a gas station.”

Raoul tells the story of a neighbor who was arrested for “vagrancy” in Las Vegas. He spent a week in a cramped and filthy cell for this and spoke to man who had been in there for 30 years for robbery. This indicates the absurd draconian brutality of the Las Vegas police and penal system. It also indicates the huge risk that Raoul is taking.

“All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit.”

Raoul reflects on the reason for the failure of the 60s and 60s drug culture. Part of this has to do with the false promise offered by people like Timothy Leary and bought into by millions: that somehow one could get a shortcut to enlightenment through a drug. Many believed it was not necessary to go through the thought, struggle, and sacrifice that had previously been required to achieve this understanding. This illusion, Raoul suggests, was bound to come crashing down at some point.

“The bathroom floor was about six inches deep with soap bars, vomit, and grapefruit rinds, mixed with broken glass.”

This is a description of the state of Raoul and Gonzo’s hotel bathroom near the end of their stay at the Flamingo. In a literal sense, it is utterly disgusting and speaks to the way they have been living in Las Vegas. At the same time, it is a metaphor for the real-world consequences of sustained drug use and the squalor and neglect it can create.

‘“That’s not me,’ I said. That’s a guy named Thompson. He works for Rolling Stone.”

What Raoul says this when accosted by a bouncer in a casino who shows him an identifying picture. Raoul denies that it is him. In one sense this, can be seen as a simple misunderstanding or an attempt by Raoul to lie his way out of a situation However, it also suggests what has been hinted at several times during the novel: that Raoul and Gonzo are really two aspects of a single character, Hunter S. Thompson.

“It is a cheap catch-all for f**koffs and misfits… a filthy piss-ridden little hole… just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the side-walk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

Raoul delivers his verdict on the nature of conventional journalism. Contrary to the claims of its adherents, journalism is not a profession in the sense of requiring any specialized skill, training, or aptitude. Rather, it is a narcissistic escape from real life and activity. And the reference to the “chimp in a zoo-cage” suggests the passive and unthinking nature of most standard journalism and journalists.

“…it is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon.”

Richard Nixon was first elected in 1968, the year Thompson symbolically associates with the end of the 60s spirit. This is indicated in the novel by 1968 being the year that the “Old Psychiatrists Club” burnt down. Raoul suggests that Nixon’s election was part of a broader cultural shift away from optimism and idealism toward cynicism and pessimism. This, he argues, coincided with the transition of drug culture towards “downers.”