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
By dawn, Duke drives Gonzo to the airport to catch a plane back to L.A., only Duke can’t find the airport. When he finally does find it, it is on the other side of the freeway and there is no way to get over. Gonzo is worried that he will miss his flight. “Don’t worry,” says Duke. “I’ve never missed a plane yet. Except once in Peru.” Suddenly, Duke cuts through the grassy median and drives directly across several lanes of traffic, coming out on the airport runway. He briefly drags a section of fencing and stops near the plane. Gonzo gets out and boards the plane with “no sign of a struggle.”
This is one of several examples of Duke’s reckless and dangerous driving, which in turn is a product of his excessive drug use. Duke’s vague reference to nearly missing a plane in Peru leaves much to the imagination. If his exploits in Vegas are any indication of his usual lifestyle, one can only image what kind of drug-fueled trouble he got into in Peru.
Themes
Duke heads back to the hotel to “take stock.” He drives near the campus of the University of Las Vegas where young students are rushing to class. Each of the students have “the hallmarks of a dangerously innocent culture.” As Duke drives, he senses trouble. He has “pushed his luck a bit far” in Vegas and has “abused every rule Vegas lives by,” including “burning the locals, abusing the tourists, [and] terrifying the help.”
Thompson draws a parallel between the American counterculture and university students, both of whom Duke refers to as naive. Here, the students are portrayed as young and “dangerously innocent,” one of the things Duke claims led to the downfall of the movement in the first place.
Themes
Duke remembers an old friend, a hippie and “out-front drifter” who wandered the country like “an early Bob Zimmerman trip.” He decided to go to Vegas and was immediately arrested for vagrancy and thrown in jail. He didn’t have the twenty-five dollars to pay for the fine, so he had to sit in jail for seven or eight days until his father wired him the money. He was in jail with some acid dealers who were arrested with $130,000 cash in their pockets. The drug dealers paid the guards to go hire them lawyers and they were out the same day. When Duke’s friend was finally released, the police took an extra twenty-five dollars from the money his father had wired and told him “never” to come back to Vegas.
Bob Zimmerman is singer/songwriter Bob Dylan’s real name, which is another reference to the American counterculture. Comparing the hippie drifter to Bob Dylan implies that he carried the same political views, which law enforcement in Vegas interpreted as a direct threat to their power. The fact that the drug dealers were so easily able to get out of jail while the drifter had to wait nearly a week again underscores the power of money in American society. Here, the drug dealers bought their freedom.
Themes
