Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Moby Dick?

Factual Questions
1

Well, i’m a bit of a Hunter S. Thompson fan. Actually i live by the Rum Diary and Fear and Loathing.

In the movie and the book Thompson makes several allusions to Moby Dick and i cant figure out why.

  1. When Thompson threatens his Attorney with the curtain rod during the whole “Acid filled Samoan in the bath tub” scene he says “Don’t fuck with me man, i am Ahab!” while holding the rod like a harpoon.
  2. Later on he rents a new car, a huge white Caddy, which, in the book, he refers to as the Great White Whale
  3. When he’s wearing the hip weighters in the water filled hotel room you can just make out “call me Ishmael” written down one of the legs (there’s something on the other leg too, but i cant remember if it’s Moby related or not).

These three stand out in my mind because they were pretty obvious, even if you weren’t looking for them. I recall others but not clearly enough to stick them in here

The Question: why the association between the two? (Perhaps Moby Dick represents the lucky capture of the American Dream in Las Vegas? Ahab dies, is this some sort of metaphor for the way the Dream may kill one who chases it too hard?)

I’ve no idea
Upham

2

[WAG]Because Melville, with Moby Dick, was the first great American writer to blend fiction and non-fiction (become part of the story, record “the full story” of a time & place - in this case the Essex incident, and whaling and Nantucket generally), a style picked up on by HST for his “non-fictional” style.[/WAG]

3

We also needed to have another series with never ending Melville references besides ‘Star Trek’

:slight_smile:

4

It would be very hard for someone raised on American classical literature to look at a fat guy in a bathtub while holding a curtain rod, or to see a large white car, and NOT think of Moby Dick.

5

Wasn’t the car called the “Great White Shark” (because it had the vent/gill openings on the side)?

6

screech-owl

He called his FIRST car (the red one the movie / book starts in) The Shark

Later he moves up to the Great White Whale (with an incredible assortment of isoteric lights and dials i knew i would never fully understand) after running the Shark into the ground.
Upham