Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Lesson Plan

Consider this quote in Chapter 9: "In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the final sin is stupidity" (72). What does this quote mean?

In this quote, Duke is suggesting a world view in which humans are all necessarily flawed and guilty of some crime or another. Miscreants are not the aberration, they are the norm. What distinguishes the bad from the good is not so much based in internal morality but on your ability to cover your tracks; it is the visibility, rather than the presence, of one's sinfulness that makes a sinner. Moreover, Duke plays on the idea of original sin, or the idea that humans have an...