Trainspotting

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Trainspotting, written by Scottish author Irvine Welsh, is a story following the lives of a group of heroin-addicted youth in Edinburgh, known as the “Skag Boys”. The story alternates between narrators but maintains a focus on the most sane of the group, Mark Renton, who builds a reputation for dropping his addiction and relapsing suddenly. The illicit drug culture the Skag Boys live provide insight to a life different from the stereotypical image of bagpipe-playing, kilt-wearing, red-headed scots depicted in American movies. Welsh veers away from these Scottish stereotypes by constructing boundaries between these Scotland’s clichés and its postmodern views, specifically focusing on boundaries between location, culture, and sobriety. In order …show more content…

At one point in the novel, Begbie, a friend of Renton’s, listens as Canadian tourists carry on about Edinburg’s beauty and the mentions the castle, the gardens and such. Dismissively, he claims “that’s aw they tourist(s)… ken the castle n Princes Street, n the High Street" (Welsh 115). MacLeod mentions that for Renton, Princes Street is a "hideous street, deadened by tourists and shoppers… the twin curses ay modern capitalism" (qtd. in Trainspotting 228). Begbie’s opinion of the castle differs from Renton’s view on the Princes Street because his views are less harsh. He sees it as though the castle serves to be good for Edinburg’s economy, introducing foreign capital to the city. Macleod also mentions that while the tourists are enthused by their experience of the castle and Edinburg’s beauty, “Begbie understands that such beauty is ultimately sold as a commodity and is unavailable to people who lack the purchasing power necessary to enjoy it” (91). That's how it fuckin works in real hfe, if ye urnae a rich cunt wi a big fuckin hoose in plenty poppy" (115). Begbie then seperates Edinburgh creating a temporary boundary between the two halves of the city. Uptown Edinburgh is defined by Begbie exclusively as a territitory "rich c*nts". More to the point, as MacLeod had …show more content…

Considering the fact that Renton and the skag boys all detest tourists, the boys tend to have a stronger hatred for Leith considering that there are many vagabonds who roam as if they were tourists, all the while having an absence of money. This is what Renton and his friends are depicted as, despite the several tourist-like situations. MacLeod describes it as: “like tourists in the contingency of their life strategies, unlike them in terms of their inability to (legitimately) access capital and consequently unable to dictate the precise terms of their own mobility… they become perverse caricatures of tourists: suspiciously similar to them in many particulars, yet simultaneously figured as their nightmare antithesis” (93). These similarities are what end up making the division so prominent, for “the spontaneous manifestation of Leith-poverty in Edinburgh-affluence makes people uneasy because it highlights the suppressed interconnections between tourist and vagabond” (MacLeod 95). Although Leith does not have the same tourist attractions such as the castle in Edinburgh, the Leith Central Station does serve as an “attraction” within Leith. A train station without trains, the Leith Central Station serves as a home for the homeless and a dead-end to the poor. MacLeod

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