Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993

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Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Kicking”

Chapter 1 Summary: “The Skag Boys, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mother Superior”

The book opens with a scene featuring the primary protagonist, Mark Renton, also called “Rents” or “Rent Boy” by the other characters, and his friend Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson. Mark is describing how he is trying to watch a Jean-Claude Van Damme video but can’t focus because Simon is coming down off a high and in need of a fresh heroin fix: “The sweat wis lashing oofay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. Ah wis jist sitting thair, focusing oan the telly, tryin no tae notice the cunt. He wis bringing me doon” (1).

Simon finally convinces Mark that they need to go find their dealer. The two take a taxi to see their go-to guy, Johnny Swan, also known as “Mother Superior” or the “White Swan.” This is one of Mark’s preferred dealers because he provides “better gear, usually” (6). By the time they reach Johnny’s, Mark is also sweating and cramping, experiencing his own withdrawal symptoms.

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Johnny is high when they arrive, hanging out with his “sidekick” Raymie, also a dealer, and a woman, Alison. They all shoot up together. Johnny makes a dark joke, suggesting that Simon can only shoot up if he shares “his works.” Sharing needles or syringes is taboo in a culture that is newly aware of HIV/AIDS.

The conversation turns from the dark topic to lighter fare: The others tell Mark that Kelly, a girlfriend of Alison’s, has a crush on him. He seems unaware of this, admitting he doesn’t know much about women. Simon, on the other hand, seems more interested in women: He and Alison go to another room to have sex: “They looked bored and passionless, but when they dinae come back, ah knew that they’d be shagging in the bedroom” (13).

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Finally, Mark and Simon leave. Mark is eager to get back home and finish watching the Jean-Claude Van Damme video.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Junk Dilemmas No. 63”

The second chapter is just a few brief paragraphs of Mark Renton’s high (internal) musings. He is keenly aware that this lifestyle is destroying him:

That’s what ah am, a coffin-dodger, and ma reflexes are not getting any better…but it’s all here, all within ma sweaty grasp. Syringe, needle, spoon, candle, lighter, packet ay powder. It’s all okay, it’s all beautiful (14).

Chapter 3 Summary: “The First Day of the Edinburgh Festival”

In Chapter 3, Mark has decided to try and kick his heroin habit. He’s rented an out-of-the-way room where his addict friends won’t be able to find him and tempt him to get high. His resolve doesn’t last long, however. Once the first pains of withdrawal kick in, he decides he needs just a little shot to get him through the discomfort.

Johnny Swan, in the meantime, has vanished, so Mark is forced to call another dealer, Mike Forrester. He takes the bus over and arrives to find Mike with his overweight girlfriend getting high with another man Mark doesn’t know. Mike clearly recognizes that Mark is in desperate need and toys with him, withholding the drugs and taking the time to insult him first. Mark puts up with it for the sake of his drugs: “Ah love nothing (except junk), ah hate nothing (except forces that prevent me getting any) and ah fear nothing (except not scoring)” (21).

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Finally, Mike tells Mark that the only thing he can offer him is opium suppositories. While Mark is skeptical, he goes ahead and inserts the suppositories. Then he leaves and is quickly has an urgent case of diarrhea. He enters a disgusting, dirty pub bathroom and insists on using it even though others tell him it’s out-of-order. He relieves himself and is at peace until he suddenly realizes he’s passed the suppositories. He then sifts through his own feces to regain them and reinserts them, forcing himself to acknowledge that he needs to quit.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The first chapters of Trainspotting give harsh insights into the strength of addiction and how hard it is to break a heroin habit. Mark’s failed attempt to become clean and the fact that he is desperate enough to dig through his own feces to regain the opium suppositories make the pull of addiction starkly clear. His putting up with Mike Forrester’s abusive behavior to get the drugs further drives this home: “Mikey baby is the man of the moment. As Sick Boy once said, doubtlessly paraphrasing some other fucker: nothing exists outside the moment” (17). In this drug-driven life, time doesn’t matter; instead, life happens between these “moments” of getting a fix.

Addiction’s vise-like grip also appears in Alison’s character, who provides a unique woman’s perspective amidst the many men around her. After she shoots up with the boys in Chapter 1, she proclaims the experience is better than sex: “[‘]That beats any meat injection…that beats any fuckin cock in the world…[’] Ali gasps, completely serious. It unnerves us tae the extent that ah feel ma ain genitals through ma troosers tae see if they’re still thair” (9). It’s an amusing and irreverent note that the men who lead lives governed by the chase for drugs over women feel unsettled by Alison’s reflection.

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Although the characters all lead wildly unhealthy and dangerous lives, they are intriguingly still health-conscious in one respect: in the face of HIV/AIDS. This is seen when Johnny Swan jokingly tries to convince Sick Boy to share his “works:” “Sick Boy shakes his heid. […] [‘]Ah dinnae share needles or syringes. Ah’ve goat ma ain works here[’]” (9). Johnny backs down, telling Simon, “Yir wise men. Hygiene’s important […] Ken wee Goagsie? He’s goat AIDS now” (10).

This keen awareness of the dangers of the drug-driven lifestyle reoccurs with Mark’s musings in Chapter 2. Even high, he acknowledges that heroin will kill him eventually. And yet “it’s all okay, it’s all beautiful” (14) if he’s high. This scene develops Mark’s existential nihilistic leanings; though he knows he will be dead soon, his life is meaningless: only the high matters.