Essay+Topics

=//**Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Due Tuesday, May 25th by 3:00pm**//=

1.The preface quotes [|Dr. Johnson] "//He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man//". The quotation alludes to the protagonists' profuse drug use in escaping the coarse realities of American life; passages detail the failed [|counterculture] of the 1960s; people who thought drug use was the answer to society's problems. The contradiction of //solace in excess// is thematically similar to //[|The Great Gatsby]//, a favorite novel of Thompson's. H. S. Thompson posits that //his// drug use (unlike Dr. Leary's mind-expansion experimentation drug use), is //intended// to render him a mess; that he is the poster boy of a generation of "permanent cripples, failed seekers...;" their erratic behaviour depicts the restless failure his generation feels. How does //Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas// depict the failure of the 1960s drug generation?

2. In the book //[|The Great Shark Hunt]//, Thompson refers to //Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas// as "a failed experiment in the [|gonzo journalism] " he practiced, which was based on [|William Faulkner]'s idea that "the best fiction is far more //true// than any kind of journalism — and the best journalists have always known this". Thompson's style blended the techniques of fictional story-telling and journalism. He called it a failed experiment because he originally intended to record every detail of the Las Vegas trip as it happened, and then publish the raw, unedited notes; however, he revised it during the spring and summer of 1971. For example, the novel describes Duke attending the motorcycle race and the narcotics convention in a few days' time; the actual events occurred a month apart. Later, he wrote, "I found myself imposing an essentially fictional framework on what began as a piece of straight/crazy journalism". Despite saying that ‘‘Fear and Loathing’’ was a failed experiment, critics call it his crowning achievement in gonzo journalism. One said the novel “feels free wheeling when you read it [but] it doesn't feel accidental. The writing is right there, on the page — startling, unprecedented and brilliantly crafted”. Analyze //Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas// as a work of Gonzo Journalism. What effect does this type of journalism have on readers and the overall message of his novel?

3. The "American Dream" is the novel's prevalent thematic motif, while searching for the literary and metaphoric American Dream, and for an eponymous real place in Las Vegas, Duke and Dr Gonzo find only a burnt psychiatric office. At story's start, Duke claims their adventure shall be a "gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country", an idea soon cooled when the excess and fear settle in them; the symbolism of the burned psychiatric office is clear. Throughout //Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas//, the protagonists go out of their way to degrade, abuse, and destroy symbols of American consumerism and excess, while Las Vegas symbolizes the coarse ugliness of mainstream American culture. Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo give it little respect. Analyze the "American Dream" theme in the novel and interpret what H.S. Thompson is try to illustrate to readers.