Lack Of Regeneration Essay

Lack of Regeneration, and an Impotent Future
In the character's ignorance of the past; or consumption by it they fail like Percival to ask the question ‘…Why do you suffer so?’. By failing to ask this question, the remain stagnant, unable to mourn --as defined by Ricouer-- and continue to make the same mistakes. Through the characters melancholic natures, they are unable to move foward. This inability to move toward the future is conveyed by both Selby and Welsh through lack of regeneration. Lack of regeneration can be seen by the way that birth fails to bring hope and death constantly fails to validate life or create any sense of community. Aaron Kelly states that ‘funerals reassure community of its own regeneration’ (49) as do births.

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 should 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. Through this, Uncle Andy’s death is compatible with Ricoeur's notion of mourning, as stated above. However the ‘unnatural’ deaths are never reconciled with because they keep occurring and the characters, especially those who live in the present, cannot truly understand why they keep happening; which leads to Melancholia and further destruction. If this does not occur;