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The Natural Cycle Of Life And Death In Trainspotting

Decent Essays

Aside from the death of Uncle Andy in ‘Growing Up in Public’, the deaths throughout Trainspotting are of young characters in their twenties and early thirties. The deaths occur most often from HIV, with the exception of Renton’s brother; whom dies in Northern Ireland. Welsh seems to kill of characters during the ‘prime of their lives’ a time when they could be growing, changing and even creating new life themselves. However, in their existence in the perpetual present they are unable to move the life cycle along organically. The death of Uncle Andy is important to note, because it seems he is the only character that’s death is the result of the natural cycle of life – and not from a complete lack of concern for the future, and the only one that accumulates with the narrator of the chapter remembering him in a positive way and finding both meaning and solace in her memories of him. This is further proved by the fact that she begins menstruating in this chapter; a sign that the future may continue if the characters come to learn from the past, incorporate it within the present and create a more positive future. If this does not occur; life and death will become obsolete much like the ‘trainspottin mindset’. The overall impotence in each of these novels brings the question of new life and therefore hope. If impotence and the circular patterns of violence that continue from one generation to the next, what hope is there that future generations will be able to move on, and save

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