The Doom of the American Dream Essay Example for Free

The Doom of the American Dream Essay The United States in the 1960’s was going through hard events. Many things happened in this decade like The Vietnam War, that was going on for a while and it affected most people in the U. S. The Cold War was also going on, but people were mostly worried about the Vietnam War. Pres John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy where assassinated in the 1960’s. Martin Luther King was also assassinated, and the whole country went on chaos. The baby boom’s 70 million children became teenagers and young adults in this decade. The Civil Rights Act was amended to include females. So many things were happening, but the main problem going on was the addiction with drugs and alcohol. There are many literature works coming from this decade, and all reflects to what was going on in that time, like the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream written by Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter talks about his journey to Las Vegas and it reflects what was going on in the country. The United States in the 1960’s was falling apart is what is being present in Hunter’s book. Hunter S. Thompson believed he had the talent to become a writer and he wrote every day. He was really upset by the death of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy because he really believed in them and he called them his guys. After he was in the Chicago’s Democratic Convention where he saw people getting beat, he had the idea that the American Dream was vanishing. He had no time to think about writing this idea of the American Dream because he decided to run for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, his campaign adopted the name of the Freak Power. He lost the election and then he really knew that the American Dream was dead, at least that is what he thought. A while later he had to go to Las Vegas to cover the Mint 40, a motorcycle race. Hunter spent some time in Las Vegas as he discovered that the heart of the American Dream happened to be there, and he went on the search for it. The idea he had about this is what the book it’s all about, the subtitle says it all â€Å"A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. † Hunter’s book is in the category of nonfiction/journalism. The book goes in chronological order with all the events that happened while Hunter was in Las Vegas. In his book he starts by going to the Mint 40, and all his crazy adventures with drugs and alcohol. He disobeyed all the laws he could think of, and he was in constant paranoid. This was a good thing because it reflected how bad the country status was. After all the trouble he causes he wants to leave, but he stayed to cover a Drug Convention in a hotel in Las Vegas. After the Drug Convention, and before leaving, he went on the hunt for the American Dream. He stops at a fast food restaurant where he asks where he can find the American Dream and he is sent to an old Psychiatrist’s Club â€Å"The owner of a gas station across the road said the place had ‘burned down about three years ago. ’† This only proves that the American Dream is dead, even if it was just a causality that he was sent to that particular place. At the end he lives Las Vegas and ends somewhere else to keep living his life. There are many characteristics that express this period of time 1960’s their people and places; one of them is no rules, out of control. There are many examples in the book to prove this right like drugs, alcohol, guns, and leaving the hotels without paying, all over the book. It all starts in the beginning of the book where he starts talking about all the drugs that they got for their trip to Las Vegas, â€Å"Getting hold of the drugs had been no problem†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (12) On one of his flashbacks he remembered a night in San Francisco, â€Å"’All this white stuff on my sleeve is LSD. ’ He said nothing. Merely grabbed my arm and began sucking on it. †(66) it’s really crazy to know that this really happened. When he was trying to leave Las Vegas for the first time, he end up with a gun and start to think what he would say if he gets caught with it, â€Å"A good. 357 is a hard thing to get, these days. So I figured, well, just get this bugger back Malibu, and it’s mine. My risk—my gun: it made perfect sense. †(71) Things like these happened throughout the book and it got worse and worse, like the time where he tried this new drug and took too much of it even when his attorney told him not to, he was paralyzed for a while, â€Å"You took too much. You’re about to explode. Jesus, look at your face! †(133) These kind of problems with drugs, not only happened to Hunter because it was also on the news he read and wrote in his book, â€Å"Doctors said Friday they were uncertain whether surgery would succeed in restoring the eyesight of a young man who pulled out his eyes while suffering the effects of a drug overdose in a jail cell. † (101) Another example for this characteristic is the fact that they stayed at two different hotels in Las Vegas without money. In both hotels they left without paying, but first they destroyed the room; â€Å"We had ordered everything into that room that human hands could carry—including about six hundred bard of translucent Neutrogena soap. † (70) When he tried to leave the first hotel he was freaking out, while waiting for the carboy to arrive â€Å"The Shark! Where was it? I tossed the paper aside and began to pace. Losing control. I felt my whole act slipping†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (75) On the second hotel he did the same thing, he lied to get away by saying he was a Doctor of Journalism. A second characteristic is the lost generation. The first young adult they met appears at the beginning of the book they never got his name, but they called him hitchhiker. The hitchhiker got in the car and kept quiet as he listened to all the nonsense from Hunters and his attorney, a couple of miles later he decided to run away, â€Å"His feet hit the asphalt abnd he started running back towards Baker. Out in the middle of the desert, not a tree in sight. † (19) The second young adult they met in this trip was Lucy. A young girl that Hunter’s attorney met on the plane to Las Vegas and gave her drugs, then took advantage of her; â€Å"She’s running away from home for something like the fifth time in six months. †(114) They knew what they did was bad and they tried to get rid of Lucy. What were two young adults doing away from home like the hitchhiker and Lucy? This only shows that parents didn’t have the control on their kids, mainly on young adults that run away searching for something only they know or at least hope to find. Another characteristic is paranoid and fear, this is in several pages just like the drugs and alcohol. They knew they were breaking the law, even though they didn’t care they were still afraid of getting caught. Like when they tried to get rid of Lucy as soon as possible, he thought of all the things that could happen to him, â€Å"What would happen to this poor wretch when we cut her loose? Jail? White slavery? † (117) He got really nervous when Lucy called their room after they thought they got rid of her, he imagined being in court and that they would all believe the innocent Lucy. Or when they left the first hotel and Hunter was afraid of being followed, â€Å"BOOM, Flashing paranoia. What kind of rat-bastard psychotic would play that son—right not, at this moment? Has somebody followed me here? † (85) Lastly power seeking, all authority figures and trying to be someone important is a strong characteristic in the book. Like a man that even though he was a police officer he didn’t get the respect he wanted, when Hunter arrived the hotel and got his room everybody where astonished. â€Å"They were stupid with shock. Here they were arguing with every piece of leverage they could command, for a room they’d already paid for—and suddenly their whole act gets side-swiped by some crusty drifter who lloks like something out of an upper-Michigan hobo jungle. † (108) Also, through the book Hunter would use identities that weren’t his, like Doctor of Journalism, police officer, or that they were undercover detectives, all to just get away with what they wanted. Even at the end to get drugs, â€Å"I jerked out my wallet and let her see the police badge while I flipped through the deck until I located my Ecclesiastical Discount Card—which identifies me as a Doctor of Divinity, a certified Minister of the Church of the New Truth. † (203) this part is a little ironic because of what it says and what he is trying to get with it. The United States being presented in Hunter’s work is really unbelievable; at least it is compared to now in the year 2008. In the book all the people were divided in two, the good guys and the bad guys. But the good guys were ten years behind the bad guys and of what they are trying to stop, â€Å"†¦and all I learned was that the National District Attorneys’ Association is about ten years behind the grim truth and harsh kinetic realities of what they have only just recently learned to call â€Å"the Drug Culture† in this foul year of Our Lord, 1971. †(201) He good guys are going to take a really long time to stop this and there’s nothing they can do, just like in the essay â€Å"Drugs† by Gore Vidal, is hard to stop something like drug addiction that has been going on for quite a time. Another essay like â€Å"Cultural Critique† by Anthony Burgess, a foreign man that spend some time in the United States and wrote this essay saying how bad was the U. S. he noticed that the country is in a bad shape, but what I like about this essay and what I agree with is that the country is still young and growing up because it is being reflect now almost 50 years later. After all the time of confusion and chaos there finally a little peace today, except for the war in Iraq. Maybe we have learned from our past mistakes because even though drug is a big thing today too, I feel it is not as bad as it used to be before. I see the 1960’s as a bad decade, but also fun at the same time because the country being so young it was easy to get away with anything; not like today that you get caught for anything. I wish I could have lived in that decade because I would have had fun, not with drugs, but with not paying hotel bill and driving nice cars. I could have been anything like a police officer and nobody would have notice I’m lying. Also, even thought the book reflects the American Dream dead, for me and many others think otherwise now-a-days with our new future president being elected, Obama. Obama represent hope in times like these that reflects a little what was going on in the 1960’s, hope that everything will get better, the hope that its retaining young adults from confusion. A president that is half African-American, it reflects that also racism is being left begin. Hopefully the 1960’s will be more than a bad/fun decade, because we have to learn from our mistakes like we have been doing, â€Å"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 foce—is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.