Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist and playwright author. He is well known for his best selling novel Trainspotting. He had adapted many of his books into screenplays and movies. Irvine Welsh was born in 1958 in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland. His father worked as a docker until his health made him work as a carpet salesman and his mother worked as a waitress. Where he was growing up, he lived in an area called Leith. The area was known for its ports and poverty in the 1980s. Welsh left Ainslie Park Secondary School at the age of sixteen and took on various jobs.
He trained and worked in electrical engineering along with studying computing for Manpower Services Commission. He worked for Hackney London Borough Council in London and became part of the real estate industry. Welsh made money through buying, renovating, and selling property. Welsh then returned to Edinburgh, where he worked for the city council in the housing department. The employers at the city council funded Welsh to undertake a Masters in Business Administration at Heriot-Watt University from 1988 to 1990. Welsh began to write creatively and began to work on books which would later form Trainspotting and The Acid House.
He found more commercial success with David Boyle’s film adaptation of Trainspotting. His film is often more memorable than his novel. The book remains a cult classic and critically acclaimed. Currently, Welsh resides in Chicago, Edinburgh and travels around these areas frequently. In July 2005, Welsh remarried for the second time to a woman 22 years younger. At 53, he does not have any children but he relieves that issue by creating music. He is working on his newest novel for 2016, The Blade Artist. The description of the book is about the character, Francis Begbie has found the perfect life in California.
He goes under the name of Jim Francis and is a painter and sculptor. The story takes a turn when his wife, Melanie finds something gruesome about in California that might have been linked to Francis’s dark past. The influences that help form Trainspotting was the punk rock era in Edinburgh, London, his incessant obsession with class warfare where he constantly bashes the hegemonic constraints of the bourgeois British (O’Malley). Welsh depicts his adolescent in his communities, rooted with poverty and unemployment. The 1980s defined the era that Britain turns out as a society.
Britain became very individualistic and the society would be materialistic. Welsh describes “It’s fascinating to me because even though we are moving to a money society, we’ve also keep the worse elements of a class society,” (O’Malley). The novel suggests some troublesome conversation starters about contemporary average workers group and association and the significant emergency in class characters. Continued oppression and inequality led Welsh to lose faith in the capacity of the main institution of society to ameliorate that idea (Kelly). The punk rock era and music scene influenced Welsh’s writing as it helped his creative process.
The characters in the story represent the punk rock era and don’t conform to society in Edinburgh. The music represent their lifestyle of nonconformity and they do drugs such as heroin, speed, MDMA, etc. Both influences help explore the deeper meaning of Trainspotting. Trainspotting has many different meaning as it is the slang for shooting up heroin and as the main character Mark Renton looks for different trains for the opportunity to choose life. In Trainspotting, Mark Renton is faced with hardships with his heroin addiction and goes against the capitalist society to separate himself and criticizes materialism in Western Society.
His crew, the Skagboys separates themselves by substance abuse from the ideological convention. Throughout the book, they criticize the consumer society and use their drugs to escape society. Renton describe the experience,” Take yir best orgasm, multiply it by twenty, and you’re still fuckin miles off the pace,” (Page 6). This passage describes how Renton feels about heroin and imply how his addiction will play a role in story about his feelings about society. Trainspotting is about Renton and his friends in their late 20’s, are genuinely dependent on heroin, and fundamentally do nothing with their lives.
Some of his friends tries to get rehabilitated for heroin only to fail at it. Welsh uses different narration from one character to another, but the main focus of the story is on Renton. He uses characters with different personality and lifestyles to compare to Renton and shows extremes of both spectrums of the characteristic traits and lifestyle. This literary device allows to show the effects of heroin on Renton and his friends and allows him to reflect on society. The alternate characters are for the most part Sick Boy, who is a womanizer, shrewd, chatty, with a law feeling of profound quality.
Spud, a decent individual, mindful, cherishing, bashful, not exceptionally mainstream. Franco, who rejects drugs, is shrewd, to a great degree rough and obtuse, essentially a psychopath. Tommy, inspired by games, celebrating, and does a little bit of drugs. Renton has to evaluate himself and his relationships with other people decode if he should choose life. Throughout the first 3 sections, the books describes the adventures of Renton and his friends and their hooligan activities. In a particular sections, Renton faces some dramatic experiences such as the death of Dawn, Lesley’s baby.
The group try to kick their habit of heroin due to the scene, but are unable to process the difficult situation and fall back on the use of heroin. Renton goes through many phases of trying to kick the habit such as locking himself in a blank room with enough food and water to endure the withdrawal. The different narrations by Spud, Sick Boy, Davie, Begbie, and Second Prize shows the contrasting personality in comparison to Renton. While Renton has minor success with kicking the habit, the rest of his crew has difficulty to their addiction and deal with in their separate ways such as drinking, stealing, or violence.
In the fourth section of the novel, blowing it, Renton and Spud are arrested for shoplifting and brought to court. Renton gets a suspended sentence due to his previous record of rehabilitation, while Spud is given ten months in prison. Renton goes to see a psychiatrists to reflect on his problems and reveals his deeper issues along with what he thinks. At the end of the passage, he reflect on materialism and society. “Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae’s behaviour is outside its mainstream.
Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah’m gaunnae huv a short life, am ay sound mind etcetera, etcetera, but still want tae use smack? They won’t let ye dae it. They won’t let ye dae it, because it’s seen as a sign ay thir am failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv tae offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind–numbing and spirit–crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth.
Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked–up brats ye’ve produced. Choose life. ” (Page 76). This quote reveals criticism about the society, materialism, and the government system. He talks about choosing all these nice things such as cars, washing machines, fashionable cars, and a house. The lifestyles people chooses and pains are dictated by the government and they look down upon people that reject society such as Renton.
Renton does not choose life because he know his real dreams and he does not want to choose the materialist lifestyle before he wastes his life and can’t make a change. After his appointment with his psychiatrist, Renton has to go through a very difficult withdrawal at his parents’ house. He experiences some frightening hallucinations such as the death of Lesley’s baby, Dawn along with other scary hallucinations. Sick Boy comes over and encourages Renton to stay off heroin, but Renton starts having symptoms of depression and anxiety.
His parents think it would be good to take Renton out to the bar to help out his depression but he fails to enjoy the night. At the end he reflects with on living a “normal” life such as having all the luxuries in life like cars and other things. In section five, Exile, Renton is in London and has no place to sleep. As he is walking throughout London, he has memories about walking around with Spud and it brings out some remarks about capitalism and materialism. “Ah remember walkin along Princes Street wi Spud, we both hate walkin along that hideous street, deadened by tourists and shoppers, the twin curses ay modern capitalism.
Ah looked up at the castle and thought, it’s just another building tae us. It registers in oor heids just like the British Home Stores or Virgin Records. We were heading tae these places oan a shoplifting spree. ” (Page 93). Renton observe the citizens around him indulging in the shopping and it angered him because the materialistic society. He sees people shopping for clothing and other luxuries. This is an example of Renton showing his hatred for capitalism. Renton is very class conscious and possess the necessary skills to be part of the common society. His inability to make connections about other people than his friends.
It makes it hard for him to interact and express emotion. While in London, he tries to fall asleep in an all-night porno theatre and stumbles upon Gi. Gi offers him a place to stay but Renton finds himself being masturbated on by Gi. Gi explains his life story by telling how he had a wife and children who he cared about deeply and he had an affair with his brother in law, Antonio. His lover suffered some extreme violent abuse which led him to kill himself. In the next story, Davie tested HIV-positive and has to go through group therapy to deal with his new illness.
He goes to find out how has he contract his own diseases and tries to get revenge on the person who cause him to get it. The rest of the section summarize about parties and adventures that the crew has. In the sixth section, home, the characters associated with Renton start having problems. In the first chapter, Spud, Begbie, and a young teenager have committed burglary on a shop. Spud and Begbie believed that their younger accomplice might have acted as a inside man that might get them in trouble. While their acts of robbery were committed, Renton has moved to London and found a job.
He comes back to Leith for a funeral for a friend named Matty. For two chapters, they figure he died from toxoplasmosis and try to figure what led to his downfall. After the funeral gathering, Renton goes to party where he is surrounding by social drug users indulging in joints containing opium and hash. Renton has an internal conflict as he knows what a hard drug addiction involves. Later on, he visits Leith for Christmas and encounters Second Prize intoxicated from too much drinking. He murmurs some insults and tries to swing at Renton. Renton is confused and figures out that Tommy has HIV from doing heroin.
After that incident, he visits Johnny Swan, the drug dealer from the beginning of the book, who has leg amputated due to his heroin use. Along with visiting Johnny Swan, Renton goes to see Tommy who is dying from AIDS. At the end of the book, Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, and Second Prize go to London to initiate a business deal. They had to meet someone named Andreas in London to complete the deal. The drugs that they were dealing with was much more concentrated and powerful than any previous drug they had before. Renton tried some of the supply that was giving to them. He was on different level after taking the drug.
They meet up with Andreas and try to negotiate a deal for the drugs. They all agreed on 16,000 euros for each person. Renton takes all the drug money from everyone and got on the bus to go to Liverpool Street Station. From there, he would purchase a train ticket to Amsterdam. Realizing what he has done, he reflects on friends and has some guilt when thinking about Spud. “Spud could not be held responsible for society’s materialism and commodity fetishism. Nothing had gone right for Spud. The world had shat on him, and now his mate had joined it. If there was one person whom Renton would try to compensate, it was Spud. ” (Page 138).
Renton continually reflects on materialism and how Spud fell victim to the commodity fetishism. He was subtle in addressing the materialist problem by showing remorse for Spud. He describes that the world was constantly putting pressure on him and nothing had went his way. Renton would try to compensate for Spud due to him being the innocent one in their group. The Skagboys are a group of friends who doesn’t like the idea of a materialistic society and try to separate themselves by the use of drugs which gives them an escape. Mark Renton criticize the capitalist society by making sneer remarks about capitalism and being materialist.
He talks about not choosing life, his hatred for tourist and shoppers that symbolizes capitalism, and feeling guilt for Spud about being materialist. The book has an underlying theme of criticizing capitalism as it deals with characters that don’t like conformity. Characters such as Begbie and Second Prize deal with their problems by drinking or violence. Most of the characters don’t try to kick their habit but instead, engage in illegal activities to fund their addiction. Throughout the story, Renton and his friends clearly showed some hatred towards materialistic ideas and avoid it through their drug abuse.
