Thomas Welshs Trainspottings Depiction Of Scotlands...

Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting’s depiction of Scotland’s heroin-addicted subculture elicits a number of questions regarding issues of heroin addiction, choice, and societal dissociation; questions which will be explored and subsequently answered in this paper. Jason Middleton notes that it has been argued that influential pop-culture works such as Trainspotting are to blame for â€Å"’glamorizing’ heroin and ‘making it look cool’† (Middleton). However, I argue instead that Trainspotting provides a complicated viewing of a besmirched and quite unglamorous side of Edinburgh through characters such as Mark Renton, whose articulation on the importance of choice highlights the interplay between heroin use and the societal and cultural disconnect he experiences in the novel. Middleton, on the idea of societal disconnect, suggests that â€Å"negation of all affect and even the body itself [is] a possible consequence of disengagement from dominant social standards† (Middleton). In regards to the cause of this disengagement, Judy Hemingway contends that â€Å"spatial politics of culture are exemplified in Trainspotting through its portrayal of divisiveness which took place during the Thatcherite 1980s when lines of demarcation were drawn between those who were valued and those who were not† (Hemingway 328). Using Middleton’s ideas on â€Å"disengagement from dominant social standards† (Middleton) as the catalyst for this paper, I aim to explore Renton’s choice to disconnect from British and Scottish