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

Character Analysis

Raoul Duke

Raoul Duke is the narrator and main protagonist of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Yet in the course of the novel, readers learn almost nothing about him. They are told that he “became a doctor of Gonzo Journalism” (199), and that his job is ostensibly that of a journalist. There are also odd vignettes about his past. For example, there is the story of the first time he took LSD. Then there is story of how he was prevented from getting on a plane in Peru, and that of his neighbor who was arrested for vagrancy. Still, there is very little information about his past, his relationships, or his life. Even his relationship to Gonzo remains obscured by their constant drug taking and the incoherent or warped conversations between them that result.

One way of explaining this absence of conventional characterization is that it is a reflection of, and comment on, the nature of the drug experience itself. Thompson tries to show with Raoul how an ordinary sense of identity can break down under the influence of psychedelics. These leave the contextualizing influence of time behind and thrust one into the immediacy and fascination of the moment. However, another related explanation is that Raoul is really only half of a unified person: Thompson himself, with Gonzo comprising the other half. This is intimated at various points in the novel. The name Raoul Duke turns out to be a fabrication, borrowed from a “leftfielder and batting champion of the St. Louis Browns” (105). The telegram from Gonzo about the conference is directed to Thompson. And, perhaps most tellingly, Raoul fails to identify himself in a photograph. Instead, he claims, “that’s not me… that’s a guy named Thompson. He works for Rolling Stone” (195). This was the magazine in which a version of the novel was first published. It suggests that, for Thompson as a writer, the drug experience has two aspects: One is the instinctual, spontaneous, though non-reflective part represented by Gonzo. The other is the reflective aspect which goes along with, but problematically tries articulating, the former experience. This struggle to reflect on and give voice to this experience is what Raoul represents.

Dr. Gonzo

When Raoul is asked about the whereabouts of his roommate, Gonzo, given that a telegram has just arrived for Raoul and Thompson from Gonzo, Raoul gives an intriguing answer. He says, “that telegram was all scrambled. It was actually from Thompson, not to him” (78). On one level this is merely a cynical lie. It is an attempt to evade the fact that Gonzo, who is supposed to be paying for their huge hotel bill, is no longer there. On another level, it reflects the notion that just as Raoul is Thompson, then Gonzo is also Thompson. He is the other necessary aspect to Thompson’s effort to give voice to an immediate and intense experience. As his name suggests, Gonzo is the principle of unrestrained action, instinct, and desire. He is the “id” to the “ego” of Raoul, associated with violence, sex, and, as when he asks Raoul to throw the toaster in the bath, the most extreme experiences. This is why he also disappears whenever the greatest drama in Las Vegas is winding down.

Inevitably this has a dark side though. When in the bath on drugs, Gonzo threatens Raoul with a hunting knife. This symbolizes the fatally self-destructive and frequently misogynistic character of drug use. Gonzo also seduces a vulnerable woman, Lucy, with the help of drugs and alcohol. He then abandons her “in the throes of a bad psychotic episode” (115) while on acid, for her to potentially end up in jail or worse. And finally, there is the waitress in the diner. Gonzo pulls “a nasty silver blade” (159) on her after she responds badly to his crude propositioning. Clearly, while exciting, the Gonzo “side” of the drug experience or the psyche cannot exist alone. It requires some kind of tempering influence by a marginally more rational part of the psyche.

Lucy

Raoul describes Lucy as “a controlled experiment” (123). When the hotel clerk at the Flamingo asks why she was crying over the phone, when trying to contact them, Raoul claims that they had deliberately put her on laudanum and that she was their “case study” (123). In a way this is true. Lucy is an experiment in what happens when someone who has “never even had a drink” (114) is suddenly exposed to hard drugs. This is in contrast to Gonzo and Raoul’s other, self-directed, study into the effects of extreme amounts of drugs on already heavy users. And the results are not promising. She has no idea where she is, has fallen in with some highly dubious characters, and is now painting pictures of Barbara Streisand “with teeth like baseballs and eyes like jellied fire” (116). Lucy demonstrates how easily and quickly the innocent and sober can be corrupted by drugs.

At the same time, Lucy is the means by which Raoul and Gonzo are given an insight into how the outside world of normality might see them. This does not occur directly through Lucy herself. She is far too incoherent for that. Rather, it is in relation to their imagined trial when she regains lucidity and reports them to the police. As Raoul says, in this fantasy, “The jury would know what we’d done. They would have read about people like us” (126). Raoul and Gonzo would be objectified as the embodiments of drug culture. They would be seen as degenerate perverts wilfully setting out to corrupt the minds and morals of normal society. They would confirm all the jury’s worst suspicions about the kinds of people who take drugs as enemies of America. As such, Raoul and Gonzo could expect no understanding and no mercy from them.