similarly trapped in a vicious cycle of solitude and distress. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a similar concept undoubtedly emerges in which the dystopic circumstances that Duke and his attorney reside in draw fascination from readers due to the fact that they seem to be so oblivious to living in a completely alternate reality. In one scene, Duke randomly tells a waitress “we’re looking for the American Dream” (p.164), yet from a wider angle the whole novel consists of two protagonists manipulating their vision of the world with hallucinogens and substances and getting involved with violent acts that ultimately lead them down a nightmarish path, deeming it almost impossible to seek any form of an ‘American Dream’. In some ways Thompson takes the opportunity to employ dark comedy to criticize American culture in the sixties and its conventional advertisement of the American Dream to be hard-earned capitalist success, where he perhaps believes that there ought to have been a change to this ideology. The novel is filled with surreal imagery that are solely as a result of drug hallucinations, to the point where “reality itself is too twisted” (p.47), and just like with A Clockwork Orange and The Butcher Boy, the sense of entrapment is revealed as a dystopia’s biggest penalty, however ‘free’ one feels. Both Burgess and McCabe depict dystopian settings as a product of the corruption of both the social environment and the human mind; A Clockwork Orange sees Alex and his tribe revolt against a state that, in their eyes is unnecessarily intruding upon their lives, but in the eyes of the government stand as a force against evil, represented by the Droogs. Likewise in The Butcher Boy, Francie feels it is his duty to overcome the trauma forced upon him by the Nugents and his familial issues, yet ultimately his hypocritical mindset of combatting his trauma with violence and rebellion leads him to no productive end and seclusion from the rest of society. Therefore, it can be postulated that a ‘dystopia’ in itself is based predominantly on perspective. In the case of A Clockwork Orange, the psychological treatment is a form of dystopia for Alex, yet for the doctors presenting the treatment in front of their audience it is their formula for a utopia. Similarly in The Butcher Boy, Francie’s brutal murder of Mrs. Nugent is in many ways a symbol of his freedom from the imprisonment he has experienced in his own dystopic bubble up until this point, and perhaps represents a light into a utopia for him, when in reality he has created an even harsher, less forgiving dystopia for himself.>