The Doom of the American Dream Essay Example for Free

The Doom of the American Dream EssayThe coupled States in the 1960s was hand proscribed through hard events. legion(predicate) things happened in this decade alike(p) The Vietnam War, that was passing game on for a bit and it affected most people in the U. S. The Cold War was also going on, but people were mostly worried some the Vietnam War. Pres John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy where assassinated in the 1960s. Martin Luther King was also assassinated, and the whole country went on chaos. The baby enlarges 70 million children became teenagers and young magnanimouss in this decade. The Civil Rights Act was am give noniceed to include females.So legion(predicate) 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 only reflects to what was going on in that time, like the throw apprehension and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the America n Dream written by Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter talks ab issue his pilgrimage to Las Vegas and it reflects what was going on in the country. The United States in the 1960s was f all(prenominal)ing apart is what is being present in Hunters book. Hunter S.Thompson believed he had the talent to become a writer and he wrote every day. He was authentically 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 Chicagos Democratic Convention where he saw people subscribe toting 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 elude 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 mo torcycle race. Hunter spent some time in Las Vegas as he observe 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 its all about, the subtitle says it all A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. Hunters book is in the category of nonfiction/journalism.The book goes in chronological rescript 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 shitty 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 be given for the American Dream.He pinchs at a fast food restaurant where he asks where he can find the American Dream and he is sent to an old Psychiatrists Club The owner of a gas station across the road said the place had burned cut out about three years ago. This only proves that the American Dream is dead, even if it was save 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 1960s 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, Getting hold of the drugs had been no problem (12) On one of his flashbacks he remembered a night in San Francisco, All this white stuff on my sleeve is LSD. He said nonhing. Merely grabbed my arm and began sucking on i t. (66) its really crazy to receipt 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, A good. 357 is a hard thing to get, these days. So I figured, well, just get this bugger back Malibu, and its mine. My riskmy gun it made better 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, You took too much.Youre 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, Doctors said Friday they were uncertain whether surgery would succeed in restoring the eyeballight of a young man who pulled out his eyes while suffering the effects of a drug overdose in a jail cell. (101) Another examp le for this characteristic is the fact that they stayed at dickens different hotels in Las Vegas without money.In both hotels they left without paying, but first they destroyed the room We had ordered everything into that room that human hands could carryincluding 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 The Shark Where was it? I tossed the motif aside and began to pace. Losing control. I felt my whole act slipping (75) On the second hotel he did the same thing, he lied to get past 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 neer 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, His feet hit the asphalt abnd he started running back to struggleds 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 Hunters attorney met on the plane to Las Vegas and gave her drugs, then took advantage of her Shes 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 didnt wipe out the control on their kids, mainly on young adults that run away searching for something only they k directly 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 didnt care they were calm down 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, What would happen to this scummy 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, BOOM, Flashing paranoia. What kind of rat-bastard psychotic would be given that sonright 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 didnt get the respect he wanted, when Hunter arrived the hotel and got his room everybody where astonished.They were stupid with shock. Here they were arguing with every piece of leverage they could command, for a room theyd already salaried forand 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 werent 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, I jerked out my wallet and let her see the police badge while I flipped through the deck until I located my Ecclesiastical Discount Cardwhich 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 Hunters 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, and all I learned was that the National District Attorneys Association is abou t ten years behind the grim truth and harsh kinetic realities of what they have only just recently learned to call 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 theres nothing they can do, just like in the essay Drugs by Gore Vidal, is hard to stop something like drug addiction that has been going on for quite a time.Another essay like Cultural Critique by Anthony Burgess, a orthogonal 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 b ad as it used to be before.I see the 1960s 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 desire 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 Im 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 1960s, 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 1960s will be more than a bad/fun decade, because we have to learn from our mistakes like we have been doing, a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never unsounded the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid-Culture the desperate assumption that somebodyor at least some foceis tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.