Essay/Term paper: Fear and loathing in las vegas

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Cliff Notes

fear and loathing in las vegas: 

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?

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
glitz of the

strip, out of work entertainers pefroming for middle americans in the
twilight of their life

gambling away penisons and savings and two bit gamblers hoping that they to
could

strike it rich and become geniune rags to riches story. Vegas with its lure
of the instant

Horatio Alger story seems to me to repersent the Amercian Dream over last
half century

and I think Hunter S. Thompson saw this too. Then there was the Mint 400 and
the drug

confrence both I think were used as vehicles to see American culture from
opposite

spectrums. There was the racers and fans for the Mint 400 a rough and tumble
bunch

some would call them rednecks, bikers or rebels. These were the people who
seemed to

be living the American Dream on their own terms. On the opposite there was
people

attending the drug convention a cross section of middle american law
enforcement

people. To these people a free trip to vegas was the vaction they and the
misses had been

waiting for. They seemed so out of place in the glitzy lights and fancy
casinos but in a

sense I feel they fit right in. They were the target market for vegas. Rich
people and hip

young Americans don't travel hundreds of miles to see Tom Jones do medleys
and eat bad

buffet food. To me the convention attendees, Mint 400 fans, casino vistors
and Raoul

Duke all resprsented diffrent aspects of one idea, The American Dream. Rauol
and his

attorney had at one time found there American Dream and had lost it along
with

thousands of others who thought the sixties really would mean a change for
the better.

The Mint folks had found theirs and as mindless and backwoodish as it might
seem to

many it fit them and I don't think they gave a damn what anyone thought. The
convention

people they represented the masses grinding it out everyday 9 to 5 living the
so called

"Honest American Way" oblivous to the way thing we

re beyond their own front lawns.