Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1971

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-12

Part 2, Chapters 1-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2, Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary

Raoul is on the way back to Las Vegas, 20 miles east of Baker. Inspired by a hatred of lizards, Raoul gets out of his car and shoots his gun into the desert. He then inspects what remains of the drugs in his kit-bag. As he says, “the stash was a hopeless mess, all churned together and half-crushed” (100). As such, Raoul gets new supplies in a pharmacy on the outskirts of Las Vegas. There he buys tequila, whisky, and a pint of ether. He also steals and reads a journal which contains a story about a man who tore out his own eyes after taking an overdose of animal tranquilizers.

Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Another Day, Another Convertible… And Another Hotel Full of Cops”

When Raoul arrives in Las Vegas he goes to a rental car lot at the airport and trades in his red Chevrolet Caprice, nicknamed “The Red Shark”, for a white Cadillac convertible he calls “The Whale”. He pays for it with a credit card that he later learns has been cancelled. Raoul then drives to the Flamingo, a hotel across the street from where the drugs conference is being held. There, as he walks to the reception, he witnesses an argument between a policeman trying to check-in and the hotel desk clerk. This confrontation is due to the clerk moving the man to a different and worse hotel because he has arrived late. The clerk is also doing it, senses Raoul, to get revenge for all the times he has been hassled by the police. Raoul takes advantage of this situation to “slide through” (108) past the irate officer and confirm his own reservation, infuriating the officer even more in the process.

Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “Savage Lucy… ‘Teeth Like Baseballs, Eyes Like Jellied Fire’”

When Raoul gets to his room, he finds a young woman inside “of indeterminate age with the face and form of a Pit Bull” (110) and his attorney standing in the bathroom naked. Both are on LSD, and the woman, named Lucy, is hostile to him and “ready for violence” (110). She calms down when Raoul notices the paintings she has done in the room of Barbra Streisand, who she thinks is playing in Las Vegas that week. When Gonzo and Raoul go to collect the rest of their luggage, the Gonzo explains that he met Lucy, who was running away from home, on the plane to Las Vegas and gave her LSD. Raoul convinces Gonzo to get rid of Lucy as she will be a huge liability when the drugs wear off and tells anyone her story. As such, they make a reservation for her at a different hotel out of town and drop her off at the airport, giving ten dollars to a cab driver to get her to the new hotel. They hope that, in her state, she will not be able to remember who Raoul and Gonzo were or where they were staying.

Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “No Refuge for Degenerates… Reflections on a Murderous Junkie”

When they get back to their hotel room at the Flamingo, they discover that Lucy has called their room, asking for Raoul. Gonzo explains that he told Lucy that he and Raoul were going to go into the desert to fight to the death over her. As such, she obviously thought that Raoul won. This turn of events makes Raoul decide to leave Las Vegas, as he worries that Lucy will tell people about him and thus land him in prison. As he reasons, a jury is bound to believe her testimony over his.

Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “A Terrible Experience with Extremely Dangerous Drugs”

To stop Raoul from leaving, Gonzo calls Lucy to deal with the situation. He tells her that Raoul paid for the hotel with a bad check and put her down as a reference. As such, people will be looking for her and, as he says, “the last thing in the world you want to do is call this hotel again; they’ll trace the call and put you straight behind bars” (130). To emphasise the severity of the situation, he acts out over the phone people kicking down his door and demanding to know where Lucy is. Raoul then takes a hit of adrenochrome from a human adrenal gland that Gonzo has acquired. However, Raoul takes too much, and he feels that his entire body is becoming paralysed and that he is going to die. Hours later, his state improves, though he remains extremely disorientated and incoherent.

Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Getting Down to Business… Opening Day at the Drug Convention”

The next morning, Raoul and Gonzo go to the police narcotics convention in the ballroom of the Dunes Hotel. The sound setup is awful, and the speakers’ knowledge of drugs and drug culture is severely limited and out of date. For example, a keynote speaker named Dr. Bloomquist comes up with a bizarre theory that the butt of a marijuana cigarette is called a “roach” “because it resembles a cockroach” (138). Gonzo becomes nervous, though, because he thinks that one of his drug-taking friends might recognize him and tell everyone that he is “out here partying with a thousand cops” (41).

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “If You Don’t Know, Come to Learn… If You Know, Come to Teach”

After the first session, which goes on into the afternoon, Gonzo becomes tired of listening to the ill-informed speeches and heads to the casino, almost causing a scene as he does so, banging into people. Shortly after, Raoul joins him and finds his attorney by the casino bar talking to a sporty-looking policeman. Gonzo tells the officer fantastical and fabricated stories about the habits of “dope fiends” and how they break into people’s homes and sit on their chests. Gonzo delivers a final story about cults of “sex fiends” (148) in Death Valley whom he dealt with by decapitating them.

Part 2, Chapters 1-7 Analysis

When Raoul enters his room at the Flamingo, he finds, along with Lucy, Gonzo “stark naked, standing in the bathroom with a drug-addled grin on his face” (110). Gonzo’s presence there is in one sense surprising. Having flown out of Las Vegas on Monday evening, he has ostensibly been able to get to Los Angeles, find out about the new assignment, telegram Raoul, fly back, and spend time in the new hotel room in little more than 12 hours. At the same time, he has been able to pick up, intoxicate, and seduce Lucy. He has completed this absurdly busy schedule all while on LSD and any number of other disorientating drugs. Such a round trip is not impossible. One might also point to the lack of clarity from the narrator, Raoul, when it comes to times. Nevertheless, the journey seems improbable.

This is not the only strange thing about Raoul’s reunion with Gonzo. After abandoning Lucy at the airport, she calls from her hotel asking for Raoul. This is peculiar given that Gonzo is the man whom she knows and is sleeping with whereas she has scarcely spoken to Raoul.

One possible explanation is that this is an example of what Raoul calls “drug reasoning” (124). On the part of both Lucy and Gonzo, the drugs that they have taken distort their ability to reason. In place of ordinary logic is the strange “rhythms” and internal logic of drug consciousness. It makes people do and say odd or illogical things. However, this can only be a partial explanation. A more compelling, though problematic, answer is that Lucy contacts Raoul and not Gonzo because Raoul and Gonzo are really the same person. This is Hunter S. Thompson, for whom the novel is semi-autobiographical, and to whom the earlier telegram about the narcotics conference, from Gonzo, is addressed. On this reading, Raoul represents the more lucid and rational “ego” side of Thompson, who can reflect on and write about his experiences. In contrast, Gonzo signifies the unfettered instinctual aspect of Thompson’s psyche, or the “id,” which seeks new gratifications and is a force of action. This would also explain why Gonzo only shows up when Raoul is about to embark on risky or extreme activity and vanishes when it is over.

Naturally, such a concept remains suggestive. Thompson plays with the idea of this psychic dualism in the novel without ever making it explicit. Nevertheless, there are several other key hints, besides Lucy asking for Raoul, which give credence to this theory. First, there are the names. Raoul Duke, readers learn when he goes to rent the white Cadillac, is the name of a “leftfielder and batting champion of the St. Louis Browns” (105). The fabricated name suggests that Raoul is not an entirely real, or whole, character. This is even more obviously the case with “Gonzo”. Gonzo is a type of journalism, popularized by Thompson, which encourages the journalist to eschew detached objectivity and rather involve themselves in and create the stories themselves. This can be seen when Gonzo leaves the talks at the police conference and starts yelling stories about Satan worshippers and “sex fiends” (148) to a horrified police officer. It is also telling that Raoul shows no interest in the novel in women or sex. On the other hand, Gonzo is excessively sexual and is said with Lucy to have “savagely penetrated every orifice in her body with his throbbing, uncircumscribed member” (116). At the same time, Gonzo is associated with more overt and extreme violence. For example, this is seen with his gun ownership and the story of how he defended a cousin who shot eight different people. All of this raises the question, as Raoul says, “who was the Hero of this filthy drama?” (122) It is unclear who out of Raoul, the ego, or Gonzo, the id, is really in control. And it is unclear, as symbolized by Gonzo’s story about their fight in the desert, who will eventually come out on top.