Reflection 9

It is common knowledge amongst anyone creating a piece of entertainment—be it movie, book, or anything—that it is your job to grip the reader within the first page, to ensure that they have a reason to care and read on. A good example of this is present in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where we’re immediately introduced to Raoul Duke’s drug habits in the first sentence, which details how the drugs began to take effect whilst Raoul and his companion were speeding through the edge of the dessert. No reader is obliged to read on; it’s the author’s obligation to make us, and in Thompson’s Fear and Loathing, I was immediately compelled to read onward following such a promising introduction.

Thompson follows this up with another, debatably more promising scene after we’re introduced to our protagonist a bit. We’re well aware by now that Raoul and his Samoan friend suffer from severe drug problems, but we wonder what drugs they plan on intoxicating themselves with, and how this will affect the plot. Our question is swiftly answered, when Raoul stops briefly to inspect the stash in the back; Thompson presents an impressive list, compromised of a myriad of illicit substances that foreshadow much of what the story will develop into, and then we’re captivated once again.

A few more pages pass, and the two pick up a straggling hitchhiker on their way to Vegas. This is the first interaction we witness between Raoul and a complete stranger; this has always been a affective way to characterize someone, displaying how they converse with a complete stranger to give further insight to their personality. The drug-addled musings of Raoul and his companion to the hitchhiker are not only amusing, but provide more depth to who these two are, which eventually motivates the hitchhiker to abandon them in the middle of the dessert for fear of his life. We’re not even twenty pages into the book, and through several unconventional sequences, we already feel as though we know who our two primary characters are without reading into much of their history of backstories.