Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
American Culture and Counterculture
The American Dream
Drugs and American Society
News and Journalism
Violence
Summary
Analysis
Duke sits alone in a bar on the outskirts of Vegas and thinks about his situation. The road between Vegas and L.A. is a straight shot, but there is no way to hide the Great Red Shark. He will be on the open road for nearly six hours with a car “so full of felonies that [Duke] is afraid to even look at it.” Abandoning the car isn’t an option. “Sweet Jesus, I am tired!” Duke cries. “I’m scared. I’m crazy. This culture has beaten me down. […] Jesus, bad waves of paranoia, madness, fear and loathing—” he says.
In this passage, it is unclear which “culture has beaten” Duke down. It seems that he is referring to the counterculture—he has spent two sleepless days resisting the establishment and he is exhausted—but it is mainstream American culture that has caused Duke to resist in the first place, so it is easily argued that this culture has “beat [him] down” as well.
Themes
“Jesus Creeping God!” Duke yells. “Is there a priest in this tavern? I want to confess! I’m a fucking sinner!” All morning long he has been trying to tell himself that he isn’t really guilty. Skipping out on his hotel bill is “merely a necessary expedient, to avoid a nasty scene.” He had made not “binding agreements; this was an institutional debt—nothing personal.” Duke prays to God for five more hours of “high-speed” driving before he “brings the hammer down.” This is all the magazine’s fault, Duke thinks. “You’d better take care of me, Lord,” he prays, “because if you don’t you’re going to have me on your hands.”
This, again, is satire—of course Duke is guilty. He openly and purposefully broke multiple laws—laws that he doesn’t agree with in the first place—but he is nonetheless guilty. To Duke, the hotel represents a corporation, not a sentient human being, so he figures that his crimes are less than those that directly target people. Still, Duke refuses to take responsibility for his actions, which Thompson suggests is also the case with the counterculture as a whole.
Themes
