Comparison Post 1

The first thing you can tell between these books is the relevance of drugs in both novels. Both of the protagonists in the novels did drugs and alcohol along their adventure. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas it is shown throughout the novel and nearly every other page has a hit of mescaline or a line of heroin. In The Rum Diary it is, instead of hardcore drugs, massive amounts of alcohol and a couple drops of the “strongest drug known to man kind” (pg. 176). These massive amounts of alcohol also include the craziest rum I’ve ever heard: 460 proof rum. That’s insane! No wonder they called it The Rum Diary. Another similarity is that the protagonist always had a right hand man along side him doing the same things he did and that buddy ends up helping him achieve the goal he wanted to achieve in the first place (and often times that goal was the moral of the story). In Fear and Loathing he had his “attorney” and in The Rum Diary he had Sala. Another important factor in both novels was that both protagonists were journalists or writers. This is significant because the author got to portray his more personal and intellectual thoughts on the papers of the protagonists. This allowed for a nonsense book to start to dip into reality and start making some sense. Without it the books that we read would be meaningless and empty, just a story of some people off on an adventure doing drugs and stuff.