At its core, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is an examination of the fall of American counterculture. During the 1960s, young people began to reject the conservative views of their parents and took to the streets in a collective rebellion to protest society’s greatest ills—specifically the mounting violence and corruption of the Vietnam War and the racial, social, and gender inequality of American society. By 1970, it became clear that the anti-establishment movement had failed to produce a better America. The war in Vietnam raged on violently and American society was still in the grips of widespread racism and sexism. The counterculture sought freedom, equality, and peace but didn’t get it, and Thompson laments this failure. Thompson’s narrator and protagonist, Raoul Duke, personifies the American countercultural movement, which places him in a unique position to critique it. Through Duke, Thompson exposes the hypocrisy of the countercultural movement and argues that it while it was inherently naive, it ultimately failed because the movement was also violent and intolerant, the very things it was fighting against.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is rife with references to the 1960s and counterculture, which in turn reflects Thompson’s own devotion to the anti-establishment movement. Thompson dedicates his book “to Bob Dylan, for Mister Tambourine Man.” Dylan came to fame during the early 1960s with songs that addressed many of the social and political concerns of the counterculture, and he quickly became known as the voice of a generation. Thompson’s dedication underscores his appreciation for both Dylan and the movement. While in Las Vegas, Duke returns to the hotel room he is sharing with his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, to find him listening to Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow and blaring “White Rabbit” at a deafening volume. Released in 1967, “White Rabbit” is widely considered to be the anthem of the countercultural movement, and Dr. Gonzo’s embrace of this song mirrors his enthusiasm for counterculture.
Duke frequently looks back on the ‘60s and reminisces fondly. “San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of,” he recalls. Duke references the movement’s social power and desire for change, claiming that “every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.” He speaks of the 1960s in idyllic terms, which makes his participation and support of counterculture clear, but his actions speak louder than his words. Duke’s prolific drug use and open contempt for law enforcement proves that he hasn’t left the ‘60s behind. Thompson’s book takes place in 1971, but Duke is still deeply entrenched in the countercultural lifestyle, which highlights both Duke and Thompson’s resistance to the traditional establishment of American society.
Despite his dedication to counterculture, however, Duke is openly critical of the movement’s naivety, which he blames in part for its failure. Duke repeatedly mentions Tim Leary, an American psychologist who openly advocated for the use of psychedelic drugs in the ‘60s. Leary argued that use of LSD and other psychedelics would lead to “consciousness expansion,” and ultimately increase “Peace and Understanding.” Duke claims that Leary’s theory has a “fatal flaw”—Leary did not account for “the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait.” In other words, as members of the counterculture expanded their minds with drug use, they quickly learned that peace and understanding don’t really exist in American society. Duke openly admits to the movement’s failure. “No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them,” Duke says. “All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit.” Duke believes they deserved to fail, even—instead of actively working toward fixing society’s problems, the counterculture got high and hoped that society would fix itself.
According to Duke, the counterculture not only failed but created an additional problem in its wake—“a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.” The counterculture falsely assumed that there was basic good in the world and that good will out. Obviously, this was not the case, and Duke likens this naivety to “a blind faith in some higher or ‘wiser authority.’” In short, the counterculture was in search of a basic good that simply wasn’t there in the first place.
In addition to this gullibility, Duke claims that the countercultural movement’s failure was cemented by violence and intolerance, which mirrored the violence and intolerance of broader American society. Duke claims that the Hell’s Angels, an American motorcycle club and organized crime syndicate who were critical players in counterculture, “blew it in 1965” when they violently attacked the SDS, or Students for a Democratic Society, a national activist organization that objected to the Vietnam War. The Angels’ attack on the anti-war march was a “historic schism” in the rising momentum of the countercultural movement, causing division within the movement itself. Duke argues that the SDS and Hell’s Angels were unable to “reconcile the interests of the lower/working class biker/dropout types and the upper/middle, Berkeley/student activists.”
In the end, the opposing social classes of the countercultural movement were intolerant of one another and unable to unite in the face of their differences—a particularly troublesome message from a movement that sought to unite an entire country. The violence between the Hell’s Angels and the SDS exploded in 1969 at a musical festival at Altamont Speedway in Northern California. The concert was riddled with fist-fights and disagreements, including the stabbing death of one concertgoer. Duke refers to the concert as an “orgy of violence,” and claims it “dramatized the problem” of counterculture. The “reality,” according to Duke, is that the movement was “terminal” and doomed to fail, but this doesn’t mean that Duke, or Thompson for that matter, has thrown in the towel and abandoned it. The alternative—to succumb to and accept the injustices of mainstream American society and culture—is unimaginable, and as such, both Duke and Thompson continue the movement despite its obvious futility.
Related Themes from Other Texts
American Culture and Counterculture ThemeTracker
American Culture and Counterculture Quotes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. 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 multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the Sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos . . . but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space.
Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn’t handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion—often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation— that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them.
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Yes, I would go back to Vegas. Slip the Kid and confound the CHP by moving East again, instead of West. This would be the shrewdest move of my life. Back to Vegas and sign up for the Drugs and Narcotics conference; me and a thousand pigs. Why not? Move confidently into their midst. Register at the Flamingo and have the White Caddy sent over at once. Do it right; remember Horatio Alger. . .
We would be attending the conference under false pretenses and dealing, from the start, with a crowd that was convened for the stated purpose of putting people like us in jail. We were the Menace—not in disguise, but stone-obvious drug abusers, with a flagrantly cranked-up act that we intended to push all the way to the limit . . . not to prove any final, sociological point, and not even as a conscious mockery: It was mainly a matter of life-style, a sense of obligation and even duty. If the Pigs were gathering in Vegas for a top-level Drug Conference, we felt the drug culture should be represented.
The first session—the opening remarks—lasted most of the afternoon. We sat patiently through the first two hours, although it was clear from the start that we weren’t going to Learn anything and it was equally clear that we’d be crazy to try any Teaching. It was easy enough to sit there with a head full of mescaline and listen to hour after hour of irrelevant gibberish. . .. There was certainly no risk involved. These poor bastards didn’t know mescaline from macaroni.
“Hell, in Malibu alone, these goddamn Satan-worshippers kill six or eight people every day.” He paused to sip his drink. “And all they want is the blood,” he continued. “They’ll take people right off the street if they have to.” He nodded. “Hell, yes. Just the other day we had a case where they grabbed a girl right out of a McDonald’s hamburger stand. She was a waitress. About sixteen years old . . . with a lot of people watching, too!” “What happened?” said our friend. “What did they do to her?” He seemed very agitated by what he was hearing. "Do?" said my attorney. “Jesus Christ man. They chopped her goddamn head off right there in the parking lot! Then they cut all kinds of holes in her and sucked out the blood.”
The “high side” of Vegas is probably the most closed society west of Sicily—and it makes no difference, in terms of the day to day life-style of the place, whether the Man at the Top is Lucky Luciano or Howard Hughes. In an economy where Tom Jones can make $75,000 a week for two shows a night at Caesar’s, the palace guard is indispensable, and they don’t care who signs their paychecks. A gold mine like Vegas breeds its own army, like any other gold mine. Hired muscle tends to accumulate in fast layers around money/power poles . . . and big money, in Vegas, is synonymous with the Power to protect it.
But what is sane? Especially here in “our own country”—in this doomstruck era of Nixon. We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously.
Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.
Sonny Barger never quite got the hang of it, but he’ll never know how close he was to a king-hell breakthrough. The Angels blew it in 1965, at the Oakland-Berkeley line, when they acted on Barger’s hardhat, con-boss instincts and attacked the front ranks of an anti-war march. This proved to be an historic schism in the then Rising Tide of the Youth Movement of the Sixties. It was the first open break between the Greasers and the Longhairs, and the importance of that break can be read in the history of SDS, which eventually destroyed itself in the doomed effort to reconcile the interests of the lower/working class biker/dropout types and the upper/middle, Berkeley/student activists.
Nobody involved in that scene, at the time, could possibly have foreseen the Implications of the Ginsberg/Kesey failure to persuade the Hell’s Angels to join forces with the radical Left from Berkeley. The final split came at Altamont, four years later, but by that time it had long been clear to everybody except a handful of rock industry dopers and the national press. The orgy of violence at Altamont merely dramatized the problem. The realities were already fixed; the illness was understood to be terminal, and the energies of The Movement were long since aggressively dissipated by the rush to self-preservation.
