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Part 2, Chapter 8
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
This chapter begins with a “Editor’s Note” that is written entirely in italics. Around this time, Duke has “broken down completely,” and after his original manuscript is destroyed, the editor at the magazine is forced to transcribe Duke’s original tape recording “verbatim.” The chapter is formatted much like a play and it entails a “transaction” between Duke, Gonzo, and the staff of a North Vegas diner. The “rationale” for the conversation is “based on a feeling—shared by both Duke and his attorney—that the American Dream” is somewhere in Las Vegas.
The use of italics makes the “Editor’s Note” feel completely disconnected from the rest of the book, and the play-like structure makes the entire chapter stand out as well. The end of this chapter concludes with Duke’s realization that the American Dream is dead, which is also the climax of the book.
Themes
After ordering his food, Gonzo asks the waitress if she knows where the American Dream is. She doesn’t, and turns to ask the cook, Lou. Gonzo explains that they have been sent by a magazine to cover the American Dream, and Lou assumes he is talking about a specific place. “Is that the old Psychiatrist’s Club?” Lou asks, referring to a discotheque on Paradise. “…or did somebody just send you on a goose chase?”
Lou’s reference to the American Dream as a “goose chase” implies that Duke and Gonzo are looking for something that doesn’t exist and thus can’t be found. This suggests that the American Dream is simply an illusion that has no hope of making average people wealthy and successful, no matter how hard they work.
Themes
According to Lou, the old Psychiatrist’s Club is a hangout for “a bunch of pushers, peddlers, uppers and downers,” where the action “never stops.” It isn’t a casino, he explains, but more like “a mental joint, where all the dopers hang out.” There is “twenty-four-hour-a-day violence” there, but the owner is “completely remodeling.” Duke and Gonzo finish their food and quietly leave.
The “pushers” and “peddlers” who hang out at the Psychiatrist’s Club are a reference to the casualties of the American counterculture. As their movement failed to produce a better American society in which the marginalized can achieve success, the American Dream must be “completely remodeled.”
Themes
The chapter ends with another “Editor’s Note” that explains Duke and Gonzo’s search for the Old Psychiatrist’s Club. They find it—“a huge slab of cracked scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of tall weeds.” A local man tells them that the club had “burned down about three years ago.”
This passage implies that the American Dream is dead. The members of the counterculture were, presumably, the only people who thought America could do better, and since they failed, the American Dream—for them, the marginalized—died as well.
Themes
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