Trainspotting, is
the first novel written by Irvine Welsh, it was published in 1993 by the
publisher Secker and Warburg. The novel can also be considered to be the most
famous one written by I. Welsh. It was adapted into a play and then into a
movie, directed by Danny Boyle, in 1996.
Irvine Welsh was born in 1958 in Leith. He is a Scottish novelist, short story writer and playwright who became famous thanks to his novel Trainspotting, published in 1993 when Welsh was 35. But before writing he tried many different jobs. After he completed a City and Guilds course in electrical engineering when he was 16, his first worked as a TV repairman. Then, he left Edinburgh to go to London in 1978 where he played guitar and sang in The Public Lice and Stairway 13. After it, he worked for Hackney London Borough Council and studied computing at the same time. In the 1980s he became a property speculator, still in London. But after the property boom of the 1980s, he came back to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He has travelled the world and has experienced many different things, such as being a DJ for example. Then he finally became a famous novelist in 1993, thanks to his first novel: Trainspotting.
A Few Words About The Author
But what about his writing style, what does he use to write his stories and why? First, he generally uses violence and unpleasant details in his stories. His main themes are: denial of opportunity; football as connected to hooliganism; sex: homosexuality, sodomy and the HIV; Irish republicanism; class divisions and emigration. Something else that must be mentionned here is that Irvine Welsh wrote this novel, as the following ones, in the Scot dialect, which is really different from standard English and which is quite hard to read when you are not used to read it.
After reading Trainspotting, I wondered why did Welsh use such a violence and what is the real message he wanted to get accross?
Trainspotting: The Plot
During the nineties in Scotland, Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie, and Tommy are five friends who share everything but especially: swindling, alcohol and drugs. They are all drug addicts, especially heroin addicts, except Begbie who only gets drunk and takes just a few drugs, as compared to his friends. The group lives in Leith, which is right next to Edinburgh, so the story takes place both in Leith and Edinburgh, and even sometimes in the English capital city, London. This can be considered to be the story of young guys who try to survive in the fringe of the Scottish society, taking drugs and cheating on the system to get some money, being violent sometimes, toward the people but also toward themselves. How will Mark Renton escape this junk world to come back to the real society? After different phases, which are different chapters of the book and which are respectively called Kicking; Relapsing; Kicking Again; Blowing It; Exile; Home and Exit, Renton will stop taking heroin twice and he will of course relapse for each time he tried to stop. Then, after many stories about the group and after the friendship between the members of this group will come to an end, he will sell a huge amount of heroin to a dealer in London with his friends. And he will finally steal the money they were all supposed to share and leave to Amsterdam. At the end of the novel, he is supposed to change his life for a better one.
Irvine Welsh uses different themes to tell this story, such as drugs and violence of course, but also sex and the HIV, music and cinema, and even sport sometimes, especially football. But the story tends to focus on Renton who is probably the most heroin addict of the group. Mark Renton is the main protagonist of the story and he is also the main narrator. However, the narration is not linear all along the book since there are many different narrators such as Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie, Kelly, Davie etc. Sometimes the story is even narrated by a third person narration.
The novel is
divided into seven sections and each section is divided into several parts that
can be considered to be many different short stories that are all linked
together, even though some characters never see each other, nor know each other, such as Davie, which character has a personnal story, even though he is Tommy's friend. Since the narrator always changes all along the novel, the reader can have
different points of view of a same event. The reader knows everything about
each character, that they sometimes even ignore themselves.
The Characters
Mark Renton: He is the main
protagonist and narrator of the story. He is a heroin addict who would do
anything to buy heroin and to take it. He narrates his life with his friends,
who he sometimes hates. He analyses everything that occurs in his life, but also
in the society. He both lives in the “heroin world” and in the “normal world”,
trying to survive in both of them. All along the story he is called differently,
such as Renton, Rents, Mark or Mark Renton. In the society he is called Mark
Renton. His parents call him Mark. And his junk friends call him Rents or
Renton. His behaviour and the way he is described change with his name.
Simon Williamson: He is Renton’s
oldest friend and is also a junk, and then he becomes a procurer at the end of
the story. He is passionate by cinema, and often imagines he is speaking with Sean
Connery, as James Bond. His good-looking face permits him to have sex with many
young girls. His daughter, Dawn, asphyxiated when everybody was high on heroin
for days. This is the first moment he admits his parental responsibility, but
it is too late. He also has nicknames; his friends call him Sick Boy or Si.
Danny Murphy: Called Spud by
his friends, he is naïve, childlike, and more delicate than his friends, less
violent, as shown by his love of animal whereas Renton and Sick Boy want to
kill a squirrel. He takes heroin and other drugs because he wouldn’t be able to
achieve anything even when sober. He is not bad, but he is involved in the
drugs addiction and in bad situations by his friends.
Francis Begbie: He is the most
violent person of the group; Renton calls him “the sociopath”. Anybody really
likes him, they mostly fear him. He does not take heroin, but he is addicted to
alcohol, and amphetamine. He rips off anybody he can, except his friend toward
whom he is very loyal, wanting them to be loyal too and to respect him.
Tommy Laurence: Passionate by
Iggy Pop, football and taking speed, he is a childhood friend of Renton who becomes
another heroin addict, mainly because of Renton, when his girlfriend leaves
him. He gets infected by the HIV and cannot bear it.
Rab McLaughlin: Also called
Second Prize by his friends, he was deserve to a promising career as a
professional footballer but he totally ruined his chances by becoming an
alcoholic.
The next scene I want to focus on, is in the part "The First Day of the Edinburgh Festival" (Section 1: Kicking), narrated by Renton. At the end of this part, after he has bought opium suppositories and used them, he has to go to public toilet because of a diarrhea, and then he looses his suppositories. Here is the part of the novel after he lost the suppositories in the toilet:
"Ah fall off the pan, ma knees splashing oantae the pishy flair. My jeans crumple tae the deck and greedily absorb the urine, but ah hardly notice. Ah roll up ma shirt sleeve and hesitate only briefly, glancing at ma scabby and occasionally weeping track marks, before plunging ma hands and forearms intae the brown water. Ah rummage fastidiously and get one ay ma bombs back straight away. Ah rub off some shite that's attached tae it. A wee bit melted, but still largely intact. Ah stick it oan toap ay the cistern. Locating the other takes several long dredges through the mess and the panhandling of the shite ay many good Muirhoose and Pilton punters. Ah gag once, but get ma white nugget ay gold, surprisingly even better preserved than the first.The feel ay water disgusts us even mair than the shite. My brown-stained airm reminds us ay the classic t-shirt tan. The line goes right up past ma elbow as ah hud tae go right around the bend."
This part is really disgusting for the reader and it is even hard to read. So John Hodge had to adapt this part of the novel for the viewer also to be disgusted by the scene and Danny Boyle filmed it in a very particular way as you can see on the picture on the right. Indeed, in the movie, for him to take back his opium suppositories, Renton also put the right hand in the brown water of the dirty and disgusting toilet, that are called "The worst public toilet in Scotland" in the film, and then he put the whole arm in it. But after he put his arm in the toilet, Renton goes further: he puts his second arm in it, then his head, and finally, his whole body is in the toilet.
After this, we can see him swimming in a kind of blue sea since the water is very clear and he finds his suppositories between some kind of rocks. He finally comes back to the surface and go out of the toilet. The next scene that follows this one in the movie is the one I studied before, called "Died Dugs" in the novel. This scene, in which Renton, (Ewan Mc Gregor), takes back his suppositories from the toilet, really has the same effect on the viewer that the novel has on readers. You are both disgusted in the novel and in the movie, even if the scene of the film is a bit surrealistic. This scene is a very famous one in the movie and people can't forget it all along the film, and even after they watched it. Irvine Welsh wanted this passage to be shocking for readers to realize how far will a junk go in order to take his drug and Danny Boyle adapted this perfectly for the movie. Even though the means is different in the film, the message coneys the same idea.
The third scene which is interesting is the moment when Dawn, Lesley's baby, dies. This part of the novel is entitled "It Goes without Saying" (Section 1: Kicking), and it is narrated by Renton. It appears to be a cot death, or that is actually what the group of friends tries to think in order not to realize this is actually their fault because they had been on drugs for days. But this part of the novel is really the same in the film. The third scene which is both interesting in the novel and in the film is when Renton is locked in his room at his parents home and he can't leave. His parents decided to lock him in his room for him not to relapse and to stop heroin definitively. But the withdrawal sympton is hard to face for him. This passage of the novel is in the part entitled "House Arrest" (Section 4: Blowing It), still narrated by Renton. Because of the withdrawal symptom, he has many hallucinations. The major one is when he sees the Little Dawn, which is actually dead because of him and his friends. He sees Dawn, walking on the ceiling, looking at him and telling him horrible things. Here is the passage where he thinks Dawn is speaking to him:
"_You let me fuckin diieeeeee, it sais. It's no Dawn. No the wee bairn.
The Book vs. The Movie
Trainspotting's main actors: From the left to the right:
Ewen Bremner (as Spud); Ewan Mc gregor (as Renton);
Robert Carlyle (as Begbie);Jonny Lee Miller (as Sick Boy);
Ewen Bremner (as Spud); Ewan Mc gregor (as Renton);
Robert Carlyle (as Begbie);Jonny Lee Miller (as Sick Boy);
Trainspotting has been adapted into a movie in 1996, three years after the novel was published. The movie was directed by a famous english film director; Danny Boyle.The first thing the book and the movie have in common is that they were both the first works of their creators. Indeed, the book was Welsh' first novel, and the movie was only the second movie Boyle directed - the first one was Shallow Grave (1994). Irvine Welsh and Danny Boyle were both born in the 1950s in the United Kingdom so I think D. Boyle could really understand the novel because, as I. Welsh, he also knew about this young generation of people who were taking as many drugs as possible and who were affected by the HIV. They probably saw the same things since they lived in the same country - so they had similar cultures - at the same period.
For a novel to be adapted for a film, it often needs some changes. Danny Boyle appointed John Hodge as the screenwriter of the film Trainspotting. His work was very difficult, because he had to write an adapted screenplay based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. The first main change that was done was to change the narration of the story. Indeed the narration in the film is linear, because only the main character narrates the story: Mark Renton. Then, since the novel is long, many "short stories" of the novel were not adapted for the film, such as the part entitled "Bad Blood" (Section 5: Exile) which is narrated by Davie. John Hodge had to cut different parts of the novel for the adapted screenplay to be shorter. Danny Boyle and John Hodge wanted the film to focus on the four main character of he novel who are Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie. Many characters of the novel have been removed in the film adaptation, such as Renton's brother: Billy. In the novel Billy is present in several short stories such as in Grieving and Mourning in Port Sunshine, in which he and his friends Lenny, Peasbo and Jackie, are waiting for their friend Granty to play cards and to share a big amount of money as they usually do each year before they go on holiday. Then they learn that their friend Granty is dead and that his girlfriend has left with the money. Jackie is finally beaten by his friends because he had slept with Granty's girlfriend and because they think he wanted to keep the money for him and Granty's girlfriend. Billy is also mentionned in many others parts of the book, narrated by his brother Renton, such as when Billy is buried. Any of the stories in which Billy and his friends are mentionned is adapted for the film, and the characters don't even exist. Any of Renton's brother are mentionned, nor Billy, nor his handicapped brother, who is dead so the idea that Mark Renton is the only survivor of the Renton's children and that he wastes this chance by taking drugs is not conveyed onscreen whereas it is in the novel. All of those changes are needed for the adaptation since a film generally lasts about 1h30 - 2h00. Trainspotting (1996's film) lasts 1h33.
But the plot is also a bit different and these "short stories" of the novel are all gathered to create a more linear story. I want to focus on 4 different main scenes of the film and to compare them to the original novel to see how they have been adapted for the film.
In the novel many stories are narrated without mentionning when they take place, such as the part "Died Dugs" (Section 4: Blowing It). This part is also modified in the movie in two ways. First, the scene comes at only 12 minutes in the film, just when Renton decides to stop taking heroin, whereas this part is narrated at the middle of the novel, when he relapses again.This scene does not need any particular circumstances to be showed onscreen because it is totally independent in the novel since the only character is Sick Boy and he never talks about Renton. Such a scene could not be that showed onscreen because the only narrator of the film is Renton so he had to be present in the scene, so the scene was changed and adapted. In the novel, Sick Boy hold a "22 air rifle" and aims at a pitbull (that he calls "shitbull") for it "tae turn against his master".He uses the dog to hurt his skinhead master. He speaks to himself, he imagines he is James Bond. Then when the pitbull attack his master, Sick Boy goes downstairs, a baseball bat in his hand to "defend" the master of the pitbull and he is finally thanked by a policeman.
In the movie, as showed on the image on the left, the scene is totally different. First Sick Boy is with Renton. They also speak like in a James Bond movie but it is Renton who has the rifle and who shoot the dog for it to attack his master, and then the scene ends. In the movie this scene is not really important whereas in the book it helps to understand Sick Boy's personality, and he explains that he does it because he hates "the schemie" and "the brain-dead". It also has political reasons since it means Sick Boy is against the skinhead counter-culture. This scene is totally different from the part "Died Dugs" in the novel but this is not the only one.
But the plot is also a bit different and these "short stories" of the novel are all gathered to create a more linear story. I want to focus on 4 different main scenes of the film and to compare them to the original novel to see how they have been adapted for the film.
The next scene I want to focus on, is in the part "The First Day of the Edinburgh Festival" (Section 1: Kicking), narrated by Renton. At the end of this part, after he has bought opium suppositories and used them, he has to go to public toilet because of a diarrhea, and then he looses his suppositories. Here is the part of the novel after he lost the suppositories in the toilet:
"Ah fall off the pan, ma knees splashing oantae the pishy flair. My jeans crumple tae the deck and greedily absorb the urine, but ah hardly notice. Ah roll up ma shirt sleeve and hesitate only briefly, glancing at ma scabby and occasionally weeping track marks, before plunging ma hands and forearms intae the brown water. Ah rummage fastidiously and get one ay ma bombs back straight away. Ah rub off some shite that's attached tae it. A wee bit melted, but still largely intact. Ah stick it oan toap ay the cistern. Locating the other takes several long dredges through the mess and the panhandling of the shite ay many good Muirhoose and Pilton punters. Ah gag once, but get ma white nugget ay gold, surprisingly even better preserved than the first.The feel ay water disgusts us even mair than the shite. My brown-stained airm reminds us ay the classic t-shirt tan. The line goes right up past ma elbow as ah hud tae go right around the bend."
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, Martin Secker&Warburg Ltd., 1993
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| Renton searching his suppositories in the toilet |
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| Renton swimming in the toilet |
The third scene which is interesting is the moment when Dawn, Lesley's baby, dies. This part of the novel is entitled "It Goes without Saying" (Section 1: Kicking), and it is narrated by Renton. It appears to be a cot death, or that is actually what the group of friends tries to think in order not to realize this is actually their fault because they had been on drugs for days. But this part of the novel is really the same in the film. The third scene which is both interesting in the novel and in the film is when Renton is locked in his room at his parents home and he can't leave. His parents decided to lock him in his room for him not to relapse and to stop heroin definitively. But the withdrawal sympton is hard to face for him. This passage of the novel is in the part entitled "House Arrest" (Section 4: Blowing It), still narrated by Renton. Because of the withdrawal symptom, he has many hallucinations. The major one is when he sees the Little Dawn, which is actually dead because of him and his friends. He sees Dawn, walking on the ceiling, looking at him and telling him horrible things. Here is the passage where he thinks Dawn is speaking to him:
"_You let me fuckin diieeeeee, it sais. It's no Dawn. No the wee bairn.
Naw, ah mean, this is fuckin crazy.
The bairn has sharp, vampire teeth wi blood drippin fae them. It's covered in a sick yellow-green slime. Its eyes are the eyes ay every psychopath ah've ever met.
_Yefuckinkilledme litmefuckindie junkedupootyirfuckinheids watchinthefuckinwaws ya fuckindopeyjunkycunt ah'llfuckinripyefuckinopen n feedoanyirfuckinmiserablesick-greyjunkyflesh startinwiyirjunkycockcauseahdiedafuckinvirginahllnivirgitafuckinriden-ivirgittaewearfuckinmakeupncoolclathesnivircheckedus yisletusfuckindiefuckinsuffocate-taefuckindeath yiskenwhitthatfeelslikeyacunts causeahvegoatafuckinsoulnahkinstillknow-fuckinpainnyousecuntsyouseselfishfuckinjunkycuntswiyirfuckinskagtookitawawayfius soah-mgaunnychewyourfuckindiseasedprickoafWANTAFUCKINBLOWJOBWANTAFUCKINBLOWJOBWANTAFAAAAAA-AAACKIN
It springs fae the ceilin doon oan top ay us. Ma fingers rip and tear at the soft, plasticine flesh and messy gunge but the ugly shrill voice is still screamin n mockin n ah jerk n jolt n feel like the bed's sprung vertical n ah'm fawin through the fuckin flair ...
Is this sssllllleeeeeeeeepppppp.
There goes ma first lurve.
Then ah'm back in the bed, still haudin the bairn, softly cradling it. Wee Dawn. Fuckin shame.
It's jist ma pillay. There's blood oan ma pillay. Mibbie it wis fae ma tongue; mibbie wee Dawn hus been here."
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, Martin Secker&Warburg Ltd., 1993
The way Irvine Welsh wrote this passage is very odd. He probably wrote this passage with that particular typology for the reader to have difficulties to read it. The reader can't read this passage as fast as the others because words are not separated with spaces and some are even written in capital letters. The effect is that the reader feels as uncomfortable as Renton does because of the hallucinations he has, due to the withdrawal symptom. So how has this passage been adapted for the film?
In the film, after many other hallucinations, such as Spud seated on the door wearing prison clothes, or Begbie in his bed speaking to him, or even Tommy also speaking to him about heroin, Renton, in his bed, first hears Dawn's cries and then he sees her crawling on the ceiling of the room, coming right above his bed before she falls on him. Then, he is totally terrified by Dawn, he does many movements to push her out of the bed, but actually she is not there. The scene ends when his parents come in the room and wake him up. The scene is very shorter than the passage of the novel and there are also many differences. First of all, Dawn does not say anything to Renton, she only cries. She also does not have vampire teeth with "blood dripping from them", and "covered in sick yellow-green slime". Finally, the passage of the novel ends with blood on Renton's pillow, whereas there is any blood on the pillow in the movie. The image of the baby is clearly more dreadful in the novel than in the movie, even though the reader has to imagine it. I personnally think that this scene could have been adapted better for the film, but the viewer is also unaware of the situation and does not understand what is happenning, as the reader does in the novel, and I think that wasWelsh's intention so Danny Boyle probably wanted to do the same onscreen and to do so he also used music and different voices for the viewer to get lost.
Finally, the last passage of the novel I want to compare with the film is the part entitled "Traditional Sunday Breakfast" (Section 2: Relapsing), narrated by Davie. In the novel, Davie wakes up in his girlfriend's bed, alone. He realizes he had had a problem during the night, after a night of drinking. Indeed, there are urine, faeces and vomit in the bed and on him. He feels very embarrassed, and he wants to take the sheets off and to wash them by himself but Gail's mother, Mrs Houston, wants to wash the sheets. Davie insists on washing the sheets by himself but she refuses, and then she grabs the sheets, he resists, and the content flies all over the kitchen, the family, and the breakfast. At the end of the passage Davie realizes the relation he had with Gail probably just stopped. Here is the passage of the novel that Welsh wrote:
In the film, the main difference with the passage of the novel is that Davie is replaced by Spud, since Davie does not exist in the film. So Spud wakes up at his girlfriend's house, who is also Gail, and then the very same thing happens, as you can see on the picture on the right. But what is also different is that this scene is combined with many others. Indeed, in the novel this scene is independent, it is not told when it happens, whereas in the movie, we can see that this scene happens on the day after the group, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Tommy, all went to a pub with their girlfriends to get drunk and to have fun all together.
Renton, who doesn't have a girlfriend, tries to have sex and that night, he has sex with Dianne, a young girl only aged 15, whereas this event, entitled "The First Shag in Ages" (Section 3: Kicking Again) happens a long time after "Traditional Sunday Breakfast" (Section 2: Relapsing) in the novel; these passages were originally independent from each other. Moreover, Dianne is Renton's only girlfriend in the film whereas in the novel, he has several girlfriends, such as Kelly for example. In the movie these two scenes are cut and mixed so that you understand this happens at the same time. Another scene is also combined to these two ones. This scene is the part of the book that is entitled "Scotland Takes Drugs in Psychic Defence" (first part of Section 2: Relapsing) narrated by Tommy, in which he tells why he quarrelled with his girlfriend Lizzy about Iggy Pop's concert. These three scenes are narrated at different moments in the novel and they don't happen at the same time. But in the film, Danny Boyle combined them and made it happen at the same time. This way, three main important passages of the novel are adapted to the film in less than 10 minutes.
To conclude, we can say that the film changed many of the main parts of the novel since the narration and the characters were changed in the film. Indeed, as seen before, some characters of the story were changed in some scenes, or some were even not adapted for the film, and that is the same for many scenes, and their order was also changed. For example the part called "Eating Out" (Section 6: Home), narrated by Kelly was not adapted for the film. This scene is a very hard one because Kelly, as waitress, gets revenge on some arrogant customers in a very particular way, which is to put some of her faeces in their meal. This is a very strange and unpleasant part of the novel, but this could have been interesting to watch such a seen onscreen, to see how Danny Boyle would have adapted this, but he was probably not inspired by this one. Even though many parts of the novel were not adapted for the film and even though many scenes are quite different from the novel, I think the message and the idea that Irvine Welsh wanted to convey are also conveyed in the film. I don't think I. Welsh vindicates the massive drug use of his young characters in his novel. I think he wanted to show how can young people destroy themselves because of this and he used many shocking, violent and hard details to show there is an alternative to this life. Many of the characters die in the novel, such as Renton's both brothers, Tommy, Matty etc. Thanks to this, Renton, a young boy, trying to find himself thanks to heroin, will realize that being an heroin addict is not a real life and he will finally stop taking heroin to begin a new life, far away from Edinburgh and Leith, in Amsterdam. Trainspotting can be considered as a very strange novel of the end of the 20th century, using many shocking details and new ways of writing a story and this is clearly the story of some poor young people who try to improve their life in the capitalist society that has emerged out for along time. But in my mind this also the story of the victory of the society upon this young character, Renton, who represents a lost generation of young people who don't believe in the system and who try to live in the fringe of this system they hate, because at the end of the novel, he finally steal the money he should share with his friends to live a better life in Amsterdam, so it can be considered as a new start of a new life. I want to believe at the end of the novel that Renton will change his life for a new health and sane one. A second Trainspotting will release in 2016, also directed by Danny Boyle so we will see what does Renton's life look like. For people who are interested in this second movie, the trailer is not yet available since the movie has not been filmed yet, but you should wait and keep surfing the internet for this. Waiting for this, here is the trailer of the first film Trainspotting:
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| Dawn crawling on the ceiling, coming above Renton |
Finally, the last passage of the novel I want to compare with the film is the part entitled "Traditional Sunday Breakfast" (Section 2: Relapsing), narrated by Davie. In the novel, Davie wakes up in his girlfriend's bed, alone. He realizes he had had a problem during the night, after a night of drinking. Indeed, there are urine, faeces and vomit in the bed and on him. He feels very embarrassed, and he wants to take the sheets off and to wash them by himself but Gail's mother, Mrs Houston, wants to wash the sheets. Davie insists on washing the sheets by himself but she refuses, and then she grabs the sheets, he resists, and the content flies all over the kitchen, the family, and the breakfast. At the end of the passage Davie realizes the relation he had with Gail probably just stopped. Here is the passage of the novel that Welsh wrote:
"_ Eh, Mrs Houston, I point to the sheets, in a bundle at my feet on the kitchen floor. _ ... Ah made a bit of a mess of the sheet and the duvet cover. Ah'm going tae take them home and clean them. Ah'll bring them back tomorrow.
_ Aw, don't you worry about that, son. Ah'll just stick them in the washing machine. You sit down and get some breakfast.
_ Naw, but, eh ... a really bad mess. Ah feel embarrassed enough. Ah'd like tae take them home.
_ Dearie dear, Mr Houston laughed.
_ Now no, you sit down, son, ah'll see tae them, Mrs Houston stole across the floor towards me, and made a grab for the bundle. The kitchen was her territory, and she would not be denied. I pulled it tae me, towards my chest; but Mrs Houston was as fast as fuck deceptively strong. She got a good grip and pulled against me.
The sheets flew open and pungent shower of skittery shite, thin alcohol sick, and vile pish splashed out across the floor. Mrs Houston stood mortified for a few seconds, then ran, heaving into the sink.
Brown flecks of runny shite stained Mr Houston's glasses, face and white shirt. It sprayed across the linoleum table and his food, like he made a mess with watery chip-shop sauce. Gail had some on her yellow blouse.
Jesus fuck.
_ God sake ... god sake ... Mr Houston repeated as Mrs Houston boaked and I made a pathetic effort to mop some of the mess back into the sheets.
Gail shot me a look of loathing and disgust. I can't see our relationship developing any further now. I'll never get Gail into bed. For the first time, that doesnae bother me. I just want out of here."
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, Martin Secker&Warburg Ltd., 1993
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| Spud looking at Gail after the event |
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| Dianne and Renton leaving the pub |
To conclude, we can say that the film changed many of the main parts of the novel since the narration and the characters were changed in the film. Indeed, as seen before, some characters of the story were changed in some scenes, or some were even not adapted for the film, and that is the same for many scenes, and their order was also changed. For example the part called "Eating Out" (Section 6: Home), narrated by Kelly was not adapted for the film. This scene is a very hard one because Kelly, as waitress, gets revenge on some arrogant customers in a very particular way, which is to put some of her faeces in their meal. This is a very strange and unpleasant part of the novel, but this could have been interesting to watch such a seen onscreen, to see how Danny Boyle would have adapted this, but he was probably not inspired by this one. Even though many parts of the novel were not adapted for the film and even though many scenes are quite different from the novel, I think the message and the idea that Irvine Welsh wanted to convey are also conveyed in the film. I don't think I. Welsh vindicates the massive drug use of his young characters in his novel. I think he wanted to show how can young people destroy themselves because of this and he used many shocking, violent and hard details to show there is an alternative to this life. Many of the characters die in the novel, such as Renton's both brothers, Tommy, Matty etc. Thanks to this, Renton, a young boy, trying to find himself thanks to heroin, will realize that being an heroin addict is not a real life and he will finally stop taking heroin to begin a new life, far away from Edinburgh and Leith, in Amsterdam. Trainspotting can be considered as a very strange novel of the end of the 20th century, using many shocking details and new ways of writing a story and this is clearly the story of some poor young people who try to improve their life in the capitalist society that has emerged out for along time. But in my mind this also the story of the victory of the society upon this young character, Renton, who represents a lost generation of young people who don't believe in the system and who try to live in the fringe of this system they hate, because at the end of the novel, he finally steal the money he should share with his friends to live a better life in Amsterdam, so it can be considered as a new start of a new life. I want to believe at the end of the novel that Renton will change his life for a new health and sane one. A second Trainspotting will release in 2016, also directed by Danny Boyle so we will see what does Renton's life look like. For people who are interested in this second movie, the trailer is not yet available since the movie has not been filmed yet, but you should wait and keep surfing the internet for this. Waiting for this, here is the trailer of the first film Trainspotting:
