Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas -Response Paper

Response #3 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Talk about "letting it all hang out", this book doesn't leave anything to the imagination. I love how nothings taboo, no territory is avoided...religion, politics, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, homophobia. It's Vegas; America at her finest or her worst? A quest to find the American Dream? seriously, have you ever heard of anyone finding a dream? Why? Have Duke and Gonzo's years of exploration and enlightenment with drugs made them think they are qualified to find a dream?

I like the thought of heading across the desert in a convertible .... to Vegas. With drugs. All of these speak strongly of freedom. If reinventing yourself, becoming someone you can't be at home is what Vegas is all about, and Vegas is the epitomy of America, then I suppose it would be logical to say that reinventing yourself is what America is all about.

It's hard to come up with something that we haven't discussed in class...cause we hit on so many things for a brief time...but we really didn't discuss the similarities with Huck Finn as much as we could have. So, like that one guy said, drugs are like Disney movies for grown-ups. An escape, but also an idealism of what we wish life could be. Floating down a river, living on your own terms. The Mississippi and Vegas are the same in that. A great place to reinvent yourself. Both books have two males that are friends...one the main character, more normal, the other a sidekick and less so. And every time either pair has a run-in with the real world, they make up a new story, on the spot, of who they are and what their situation is. They are forced to fake acceptibility. I was pretty impressed by that ability to lie so smoothly and that the people almost always believed them. I feel like I've seen this in other stuff, too, maybe a couple movies. Oh, like Catch me if You Can. with Leonardo DiCaprio. BUT ..I think the point is that obligations still exist even when you have a new identity. And the further you go down the river or the more credit card bills you run up the worse it gets... till you might not ever get back to the real world. Total escape is futile. As for expanding your mind...nah just kidding.

So this book's supposed to about the American Dream....but where is it? As far as I can tell, it's a cement building where druggies