Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

"Load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard" to Las Vegas (12)

Las Vegas has always been known as sin city, and the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas portrays this belief. Hunter S. Thompson portrays a rather thoughtful glance into the mind of addiction and of drug usage. The illegal drugs play a major role in provoking the narrator's outrage that he has toward the contemporary life of society.

The book takes place in the early 1970's, and the main character, Raoul Duke, is sent to Las Vegas to write an article on the 4th Annual "Mint 400" dirt bike and dune buggy race. (Raoul Duke is actually the false name under which Hunter Thompson portrays himself as the main character and narrator.) Under the advice of his estranged lawyer (whose alias is Dr. Gonzo,) both drive out to Las Vegas on a non-stop LSD and mescaline trip. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold," is the line in which the book begins (3.) Not only are these two drugs abused, but other drugs such as ether, cocaine, marijuana, and Thorazine are also abused. According to the story Thompson tells:

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers....Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls" (4.)

As the main character experiments with the different drugs, the reader can hear his thoughts as he rambles from extreme paranoia to thoughtful insights. Not only did the book show the normal side of LSD, it also showed the adverse side as well. There were many scenes where the two men thought the cops were coming for them and experienced extreme paranoia about this throughout the novel. In the following scene, Thompson

portrays paranoia:

"The objective was the big tower of the Mint Hotel, downtown--and if we didn't get there before we lost all control, there was also the Nevada State prison upstate in Carson City. I had been there once, but only for a talk with the prisoners--I didn't want to go back, for any reason at all" (22.)

In this same scene, Raoul Duke seems to have a panic attack in the hotel cocktail lounge--"We are right in the middle of a fucking