Trainspotting Post #1

Welsh wastes no time before throwing us into a world of drugs and the pursuit of more drugs.  Although the novel does not have a traditional main character because the point of view is constantly changing, Renton is the closest thing to it.  His point of view provides the reader with a unique experience because it allows for us to experience Leith and the world of drugs in which they live from the perspective of a junky.  Certainly the language itself is difficult to understand at times, but this is not the strength of the Renton chapter.  The strength of his point of view is in conveying the anxiety he, Sick Boy, and the others experience in their unending pursuit of heroine.  Their appetite is insatiable, and their addiction is the conflict throughout most of the opening chapters of the novel. 

What is off-putting about the group is their complete neglect for those around them.  Begbie in particular is off-putting because he bullies people indiscriminately.  Not only does he torture his friends with constant threats, but he picks on tourists and robs them for fun.  But Begbie is not the only one who is off-putting.  In fact, the whole group of them were so high for so long that they allowed for a baby to die from such an extended period of neglect.  It is likely that the kid had been dead for days, but no one was sober enough to realize it. 

The book is totally a critique of the state.  Drugs and the state come up together all the time, which suggests that the Renton and the others were using drugs, among other reasons, as a form of protest. Renton says: “On the issue of drugs, we wir classical liberals, vehemently opposed tae state intervention in any form.” (53) But the state comes up elsewhere in the novel, even when drugs are not involved.  Stevie at the New Years party finds a way of relating football to what he believes is an oppressive British social structure.  He says: “Football divisions were a stupid and irrelevant nonsense, acting against the interests of working-class unity, ensuring that the bourgeoisie’s hegemony went unchallenged.” (48)

 I’m not sure I detected Welsh himself in the first two sections.  Later on in the novel we encounter a lot more third person objective narration, and I suppose that those chapters are more Welsh.