Trainspotting: Blowing It Summary & Analysis

Sick Boy’s taunting of Begbie shows how Sick Boy not only tolerates living a reckless lifestyle but seems to actively enjoy adding additional risks to his life.

The allusion to Planet of the Apes continues the pattern of pop culture references playing an important part in the story. While the apes in that film were intelligent, this man seems more animalistic and motivated by instinct and libido. Sick Boy’s offer to sell the woman is a logical next step for his character, since he already treats relationships as transactional.

This section builds on Rent Boy’s selfishness established earlier in the courtroom scene by showing the effects of the heroin that Rent Boy gave to Tommy. While Rent Boy doesn’t deserve full responsibility for Spud’s or Tommy’s fates, his lack of active care for his friends seems to be having a ripple effect throughout the whole community.

Rent Boy always prioritizes himself, and this is what ultimately leads him to feel alone. The reference to Johnny Swan is significant because it will be the first time Rent Boy has used heroin since the death of Dawn.

This section reveals that Rent Boy did in fact get high. The literal paralysis he feels is also the metaphorical paralysis that his addiction creates, stopping him from moving forward in life.

This section gives just one example of how Sick Boy lives up to his nickname. Sick Boy contrasts sharply with Spud, who wouldn’t hurt a squirrel (but who as a result of his kind nature gets sent away to jail).

Sick Boy gains nothing from this encounter other than perhaps his own sadistic pleasure. This passage conveys how Sick Boy thrives on outsmarting people around him and how he can trick people into liking him even when he’s done terrible things to them.

This section reveals an important part of Rent Boy’s backstory that helps explain some of the previous sections. Instead of using flashbacks, Welsh shows Rent Boy with a psychiatrist, which provides an excuse for Rent Boy to reconsider his past.

The paralysis of Davie Renton mirrors Rent Boy’s own paralysis when he’s on heroin. As is often the case, Rent Boy hates things that make him confront his issues and shortcomings directly, and his brother Davie is an example of this.

A mortgage (paying to own property) is the opposite of renting, so Rent Boy’s nickname is appropriate, since he wants to stay renting and never have a mortgage. Although the book often portrays Rent Boy’s choices and particularly his addiction in a morally ambiguous light, in this section Rent Boy defends his lifestyle and his actions, claiming that what he does is better than the alternative (i.e., upholding mainstream ideal). Rent Boy is an unreliable narrator, and so his statements shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value, but at the same time, the book does explore how Rent Boy might have a point about the emptiness of mainstream society.

Rent Boy’s first overdose suggests that he has been lucky so far with his addiction but that his luck won’t hold out forever.

Both Rent Boy and his brother Davie have been “paralyzed” in some way—Davie was literally paralyzed, but Rent Boy is metaphorically paralyzed (although sometimes the effects of heroin also resemble literal paralysis). Rent Boy’s mother’s total rejection of maintenance drugs like methadone suggests that she doesn’t understand the symptoms of heroin withdrawal.

This passage further explores how despite Rent Boy’s parents good intentions, they don’t really understand their son. They know that something has gone wrong with Rent Boy and want to help, but they lack the knowledge to do so and at times do more harm than good. Valium, while potentially addictive, is very different from heroin, and so Rent Boy’s mother’s suggestion that her own Valium habit gives her insight into her son’s heroin addiction isn’t quite accurate.

This passage tries to convey the extreme effects of quitting heroin cold turkey. When Rent Boy tried to quit heroin at the beginning of the novel, he suffered so much that he had to go get the opium suppositories. Sick Boy’s manipulation of Rent Boy’s parents once again demonstrates his depraved personality.

Rent Boy perhaps expects Sick Boy to be there to give him drugs, but in fact, Sick Boy has been able to stay away from heroin. Sick Boy may be a morally dubious character, but he focuses strongly on self-preservation, and this is perhaps why he is more successful than many of the other characters at kicking his heroin addiction. 

Sick Boy and Rent Boy have a rivalry in their friend group, and so Sick Boy appreciates having an opportunity to gloat during one of Rent Boy’s low moments. Nevertheless, a part of Rent Boy seems to enjoy their rivalry, and he understands Sick Boy better than someone like Begbie.

Rent Boy commonly shows symptoms of depression, and it isn’t always clear which feelings are related to heroin use and which feelings he’d have anyway. Although Rent Boy liked Johnny Swan at the beginning of the book, he slowly begins to see how Johnny Swan isn’t that great a person, particularly after Johnny talks so callously about the Lesley’s hospitalization.

Rent Boy’s feeling that his parents are always watching him may be paranoia. Even after he begins to kick his heroin habit, Rent Boy has a difficult time reconnecting with the world around him.

Rent Boy tells his school friend about the morally questionable things Sick Boy is doing (all of which are true) as a way of getting revenge for the earlier scene where Sick Boy talked down to Rent Boy while Rent Boy was recovering at his parents’ house. Rent Boy doesn’t understand why he feels the need to keep up a rivalry with Sick Boy, and this perhaps relates to his overarching sense that life is meaningless.

This book takes place during the Troubles, a period in history when the largely Protestant royalists (who supported Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK) fought against the largely Catholic republicans (who supported a united, independent island of Ireland). For Rent Boy, who believes that Scotland too should become independent, Britain is an oppressive imperial power, and so by joining the British Army, Billy betrayed his homeland of Scotland.

Rent Boy continues to see the selfish side of things (how Billy’s death might be good for him) and yet his feelings are arguably more sympathetic here than usual, since unlike with Spud, Rent Boy actually has a reason not to care about Billy (because Billy used to bully Rent Boy).

Nina was the main character of a previous chapter that took place during a funeral (Uncle Andy’s). The many funerals in the book show how accustomed the characters have become to death and hardship in general.  

While Rent Boy typically has no problem lying, he struggles to lie in this scene and so limits himself to telling a version of the truth. This shows how, while Rent Boy might not have liked his brother very much, he nevertheless remains deeply affected by his death.

While Rent Boy himself feels that Billy was a traitor to Scotland, many of his family members feel exactly the opposite and that Billy was a patriot. This reflects Scotland’s complicated relationship to England the rest of the UK, pitting family members against each other, and it illustrates why Scottish independence remains a contentious issue.

Rent Boy’s unusual behavior once again shows that his brother’s death, perhaps combined with his heroin withdrawal-induced depression have caused him to act erratically. Rent Boy seems to think at first that he can finally assert his superiority over Billy by having sex with Billy’s girlfriend after Billy’s death. 

Rent Boy soon realizes that his efforts to try to outdo his brother are futile—after all, Billy is dead, and so it’s impossible for him to compete with Rent Boy. Rent Boy’s disgust toward Sharon is in part a manifestation of Rent Boy’s own disgust at himself and the morally questionable things he’s willing to do.

Sharon’s behavior with Billy recalls that of the random woman in a bar that Tommy and Second Prize witnessed being beaten. Billy’s inability to change his own violent behavior has clear parallels with Rent Boy’s own inability to quit his addiction. Rent Boy faces his own dark side at his brother’s funeral, and this drives him yet again to seek out heroin as a coping mechanism.

The location of this “Junk Dilemmas” confirms yet again that Rent Boy has relapsed and is back to using heroin.