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Journalistic accounts are typically thought of as factual account of what has happened. The accounts are mostly straight forward and easy to understand. They usually don't include the author's personal opinions or commentary. The boundaries for this were stretched and even broken by Hunter S. Thompson in, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Joan Didion in, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. They both wrote their pieces from their own perspective and with commentary. The writings hold the writers own representation of a reality that they are trying to get the reader to buy into. The difference is that Thompson finds a way to deny objectivity through his writing, such as being high on drugs, but Didion is very objective and is caught making mistakes that go against her representation. Although the writing styles of these two journalists are similar, their messages are quite different. While Thompson embraces what he believes to be the American Dream, Didion implies that the American Dream is lost.
In, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the prominent use of drugs is apparent, but the way Thompson uses these drugs in search of something, is not so clear. The subtitle of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is "A Savage Journey to the heart of the American Dream," this leads into Thompson's ideals of the American Dream which are found through his drug infested search. The use of drugs are used to change Thompson's perception. Thompson uses drugs as an accessory to everyday life in his account of events. These drugs cause the escape from reality to be possible which leads him to get in touch with a different perception. This perception that is gained helps Thompson find the ideals he is in search for along with the drugs being apart of the ideal. As Thompson and his lawyer are headed to Las Vegas he thinks to himself, after being frustrated by not knowing what the story he was covering was suppose to be, "Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas" (Thompson 1). The fact that he complacently tells himself that this is a true escape from life goes to show that he is willing to take any means necessary to leave reality for a moment in time. Thompson uses the word "heinous" as though the chemicals have a life of their own that changes the way he perceives things. Thompson feels as though searching for the ideals of the American Dream lies within oneself. The way to find it depends on how deep you are willing to look for it. In the beginning of the event he says
But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that. (Thompson 18)
Although the first part of the quote about being, "right and true and decent in the national character," is ironic between what is legal in America and all of the drugs and alcohol he consumes, he leads the reader to believe that there are so many possibilities in America despite the irony in his writing style. Instead of saying that everyone can enjoy these possibilities he says that the only way to receive these possibilities is for you to have "true grit." He says this because of the illegal things, such as the drugs and the drinking, that they consume throughout the trip. He makes a point that not everyone is willing to risk themselves for these "fantastic possibilities." Because the risks that he takes are illegal it makes him paranoid throughout his writing. This paranoia is what causes tension between what he is embracing as the ideals of the American Dream. He embraces the ideals that it is okay for one to be pumped up on drugs and to explore the many "possibilities," or freedoms, which lay open to him. Towards the end of the piece Thompson illuminates this paranoia during his time in Circus-Circus when he's trying to leave with his attorney, "'Don't go near that elevator,' I said. 'That's jut what they want us to do…trap us in a steel box and take us down to the basement'" (Thompson 50). Through his entire search of all these possibilities, he is still concerned with getting caught and this causes a misrepresentation with what he's trying to sell to the reader. The ideals of having these possibilities are limited. One can't truly be entirely free to do things in America without consequences. During Thompson's time in Las Vegas he claims that he has found it, "'we came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit,' I grabbed his bicep and squeezed. 'You must realize,' I said, 'that we've found the main nerve'" (Thompson 47-8). Through all of his wild antics Thompson has claimed to find the American Dream and the ideals that go with it despite the fact that he has suffered from great paranoia. As Thompson goes through the actions to find his ideals of the American Dream he tends to encounter the law, not directly, but through this constant paranoia. Thompson is very un-objective in the way that he writes about his search for the American Dream. He doesn't claim to be telling the truth, but rather shows his perception in the state of mind he is in. While Thompson embraces the ideals of the American Dream, Didion represents a world that's "center was not holding" and which does not entail an American Dream.
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Joan Didion's journalistic account, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is preceded by "The Second Coming," a poem by W.B. Yeats, where he writes of anarchy being "loosed upon the world," and that "things fall apart; the center cannot hold." The meaning of this poem differs for each reader, but he is speaking of the time when Jesus comes back to Earth. Didion uses his poem to start her representation of a society that is falling apart. She focuses on the "hippies" in San Francisco. She claims that they are devoid of any real meaning and that they are political un-realist who tends to adopt romantic idealism. At one point she talks to a man named Deadeye who is a "hippie" and does drugs but talks of his dreams in life, "'What I want to do now,' Deadeye says, 'is set up a house where a person of any age can come, spend a few days, talk over his problems…'"(Didion 5). Deadeye tells Didion of his aspirations which she ultimately dismisses by bringing up how he is going to make the money to buy the house. This leads back to the drugs he sells and her reinforcement that the generation that she is writing about is all about the romantic idealistic frame of mind. She leads you to believe that these "children" have no sense of an American Dream, yet her writing suggests otherwise; they do have goals to fulfill during their lives. Didion uses drugs as part of the downfall of how these generations, after her own, are functioning. Although drugs play a considerable role to Didion in the downfall, she blames her generation for not instilling this attribute of the ideals of the American Dream to the younger generations. She writes, "the signals between the generations are irrevocably jammed" (Didion 107). Meaning that somewhere between her generation and the generation she writes of, the communication was lost. She writes of this communication failure and the failure to stop believing
At some point between 145 and 167 we had somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. Maybe we had stopped believing in the rules ourselves, maybe we were having a failure of nerve about the game. Maybe there were just too few people around to do the telling. These were children who grew up cut loose from the web of cousins and great-aunts and family doctors and lifelong neighbors who had traditionally suggested and enforced the society's values (Didion 108).
Her generation has stopped "believing in the rules" and that the way to fix this "social hemorrhaging" was to start believing in the rules again and to teach these children just that. The game that they happened to be playing was the game of life. According to Didion they needed to set straight the rules for the children so that it could be passed on from them to their children, and so on. This completely takes away from the ideals of the American Dream, in which Thompson was embracing. Instead of having "possibilities" they are forced to follow rules or guidelines that are already set for them. For the ideals of the American Dream to be lost the children wouldn't be trying to set certain goals for what they want to do. The children are, "against the culture which had produced Saran-Wrap and the Vietnam War" (Didion 107). They feel as though the can make a difference by going against how the generations before them did things that produced ill effects and moving in a different direction to succeed in coming up with better results. Didion's representation of the counter-culture "hippies" of not having a dream, or an American Dream, is often times apparent, yet she omits it and looks past it to criticize the society she is living in.
Although Thompson and Didion write their accounts in the same era, the perspectives are very different. Thompson shows no objectivity in his writing, while Didion writes with a large amount of objectivity. She overlooks many aspects and excludes many things from her writing. She excludes the purpose of the "hippies," the awareness of social norms, and the analyses of what the "hippies" believe. The exclusion of these things is what is at stake in Didion's writing. She builds you to believe that through all of these children lies nothing more than a romantic idealistic sense of character towards the world. Thompson on the other hand shows us through his perceptions on drugs, that what he does are the ideals of the American Dream. This is something he believes to be true and which he embraces as something valuable to him. The search for the "possibilities" that are available to any one person and to not be afraid to do anything in search for them is his message. Thompson brings the stake of how far one person will go to find exactly what they are searching for. Between the two journalistic accounts Thompson appealed more in what he embraced and how he used his writing style to contribute to his representation. Although Didion made a distinct point of the "center not holding" she often dismissed things too quickly to allow the reader to buy into her representation.
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