摘 要

亚文化不同于主流文化，是指社会中属于从属地位的一部分成员所接受的，或为某一社会群体所特有的生活方式。而青年亚文化指青年企图解决他们共同面临的存在于社会结构中的矛盾而采取的文化方案，其特点是边缘性、颠覆性。英格兰作家欧文·威尔士所著的《猜火车》通过刻画雷斯地区青年反抗社会、反对道德的生活方式（通常为越轨行为）将青年亚文化的特点淋漓尽致地展现了出来。本文旨在通过参考西方亚文化及越轨行为的研究发展，进一步分析《猜火车》文本，探讨其背后映射的青年亚文化下青年的困境，以便更好地寻找回归主流文化的出路。

关键词:越轨行为；青年亚文化；《猜火车》；困境与拯救

Abstract

Sub-culture, different from mainstream culture, refers to the way of life accepted by some members of a subordinate position in the society or by a particular social group. Meanwhile, youth sub-culture refers to the cultural behavior adopted by the youth in order to solve the contradictions in the social structure that they face together, which is characterized by marginality and subversiveness. Trainspotting, written by England writer Irvine Welsh, shows the characteristics of the youth sub-culture vividly by depicting the rebellious and anti-moral life style (usually termed as deviant behavior) of the youth in Leith, England. This thesis, by analyzing the text of Trainspotting, explores the plight of the youth under the reflection of youth sub-culture. Based on the research on the development of the western subculture and deviance, the thesis aims to find a better way for deviant juvenile to return to the mainstream culture.

Key Words: deviance; youth sub-culture; Trainspotting; dilemma and salvation

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction of Trainspotting 1

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research 2

1.3 Structure of the thesis 3

2 Literature Review 3

3 Theoretical Analysis of background in Trainspotting 5

3.1 Western Sub-culture 5

3.2 Western Deviance 8

4 Thematic Analysis of Trainspotting 10

4.1 Plots and Characters 10

4.2 Dilemma and Salvation 13

5 Conclusion 14

References 16

Acknowledgements 18

From Deviance to Salvation: A Thematic Study of Trainspotting

1 Introduction

Introduction of Trainspotting

Published in 1993 and nominated for the Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1994, the first 3 000 printed copies of Trainspotting were reprinted sixteen times, and the novel had sold 150 000 copies by 1996 (Morace, 2001). Trainspotting, a novel is set in the mid-1980s in Leith, a suburb of Edinburgh, “A place ay dispossessed white trash in a trash county fill ay dispossessed white trash.” The central characters, Mark Renton, Sick Boy(Simon David Williams), Spud (Danny Murphy) and Francis Begbie convey a sense of contempt to their nation Scots, as well as a lack of identification with Scottish society. Whereas, the core characters are not some cynical teenagers struggling for social changes; on the contrary, they all are notorious rascals. Drugs, sex abuse, violence, and other deviant choices are the basic elements of their behavior and these made Trainspotting as the rebellious Bible for teenagers.

The whole novel takes Renton, the protagonist, who takes drugs over and over (heroin addiction, rehabilitation, re-addiction) as the main line, narrating story from other partners’ different perspectives as well. The plot of their life is fragmented; even though, the emotional change and psychological process of Renton is well presented, offering us a chance to understand their psychology and letting us further understand the incentive of their drug abuse, deviant behavior, their psychological thinking, as well as their plight and salvation in their non-mainstream lifestyle.

The original connotation of Trainspotting, refers to a game that the winner is the one who remember the most carriage number of the passing trains. However, In Welsh’s work, it refers to the process of those drug addicts who find their available vessel to inject. Being on the verge of the society, like the characters in the novel, these adolescents consider affairs with negative attitude, they view things only from their sides; they disagree everything and nothing is worth cherishing; furthermore, they break the law just because crime-commiting make people excited. Drug addict, sex abuse, stealing, fighting, these violent, lustful and temerarious elements have become the distinct characteristics of the youth sub-culture; at the same time, they also are the characteristics of delinquency. Teenager deviance becomes an emerging theme to sociological research since the end of the 19th century when Durkheim initiated the study of the sociology of Deviance in the west. The long-standing problem of transgression is both ancient and modern. And the attribution is also based on internal and external factors.

Purpose and Significance of the Research

Nowadays, the theme of youth sub-culture and juvenile delinquency received increasing attention and as a direction of the Sociology of the Youth, many scholars have already done relative researches. But most of them are concerned with studying the phenomena of the youth sub-culture groups instead of deeply observing their behavior motivation and situation. And back to Trainspotting, as the Bible of the deviant youth, the description of their characters’ deviant lifestyle, to some extent, reflects a general state of juvenile transgression. We can study their inner mind as well as the inducement of delinquency, through the exquisite description of the characters of Trainspotting and better to find a way out of their predicament.

Youth sub-culture, a subdivision of sub-culture, refers to the values, thinking characteristics, language styles and behavior patterns that exist in the youth(Huang Bei, Zhang Hong-xia, 2017). The generation of youth sub-culture is a kind of social and cultural phenomenon by the development of society, in view of the characteristics of adolescence, emotion venting and sensory stimulation become the external characteristics of the youth sub-culture. In terms of the ideological content of deviant adolescent, it is negative and unconstructive; namely, it implied resistance to mainstream society and rebellious tendency(Meng Deng-ying, 2008). This kind of irrational resistance would turn into the obstacles in the process of the youth's education and development. And juvenile delinquency, a behavior pattern of youth sub-culture. Due to the characteristics of teenagers their deviant behavior is easy for them to cross the moral line leading them to the road of crime. That is to say, it’s necessary to study the causes of deviant youth’s behavior, their psychological attitude and their dilemma caused by deviant behavior. Based on the development background of Sub-culture and Deviance theories, this paper analyzes the inner thoughts and attitudes of the characters in Trainspotting, further discusses the motivation and mentality of deviant behaviors in the youth sub-culture, and better explores ways to guide the young people to return to the mainstream culture.

Structure of the thesis

This paper is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is introduction. This part discusses from three aspects, including: the introduction of Trainspotting, the purpose and significance of the research, and the structure of this thesis. Chapter two is literature review, providing results relating to the research of Trainspotting. By analyzing and comparing the viewpoints of different scholars, this thesis puts forward brand new research arguments. Chapter three is theoretical analysis of background. It mainly analyzes the background of Trainspotting from the development of western sub-culture theory and western deviance theory. Chapter four is the most important part of this paper, it focus on the thematic analysis of Trainspotting, discussing the plots and the characters based on the theory mentioned earlier and figuring out some salvation ways for deviant teenagers. The last Chapter five is the conclusion. This chapter presents the research result of this thesis and aims to provide useful research conclusions for further research.

2 Literature review

Trainspotting, a novel written by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, vividly depicts the rebellious lifestyle of the youth, and it was famous as the rebellious Bible for teenagers in the foreign countries. But for many domestic reader, it is not familiar as well as Chinese scholars. The number of relative research based on this novel is limited but there are still few paper to refer to.

In 2008, Huang Shao-wen from Putian University has analyzed this novel in her paper Identity Dilemma in Youth Subculture in Movie Trainspotting. In this paper, she focus on the identity of teenagers. She believes that the reason for these rascals' deviant behavior is that they are confused about their identity, and it is precisely because of the ambiguity of their identity that they turn away from the normal social order, evade social responsibility, or even self-rejection. In another paper, Alienation in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting wrote by B.A. Senekal from University of the Free State, mainly examines how Melvin Seeman’s theory of alienation (1959) and modern alienation research manifest in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and attempts to incorporate other new theory of alienation in the analysis of this fiction.

In another dimension, Dou Jing from Mu Danjiang Normal University and Cheng Xiao-ju from Changzhou vocational college of mechanical and electrical technology, they mainly analyze the translation of slang in Trainspotting, aiming at helping readers, translators and learners better understand the use of slang in contemporary English literature, film and television works.

Further more, Scottish Underclass and Freedom with Anxiety in Trainspotting wrote by Lv Hong-ling from Nanjing Normal University, using the discussion of Zygmunt Bauman on the freedom of post-modern consumer society, combining with the thatcher era policy influence on Scotland analyzing the presentation of anxiety and identity problem of the common people in Scotland based on Welsh’s novel.