Trainspotting Analysis

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
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
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