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Specialist Study


“The Acid House” by Irvine Welsh is a collection of short stories which plays with the reader’s expectations and typical stereotypes of particular characters. This study will examine two of these stories “Grannies Old Junk” and “Where The Debris Meets The Sea” and show how Irvine Welsh breaks down these stereotypes using characterisation and language.
“Grannies Old Junk” is about a heroin addicted man who is going to visit his grandmother. He is planning to steal her money savings, which she keeps hidden in an old biscuit tin, to buy more heroin. From the title “Grannies Old Junk” the reader would expect it to be about him finding some old antique rubbish she keeps or relate to some sort of old keep sake she has, it is a play on the words, a pun. However in the end the grandson finds a stash of drugs in the tin where she kept the money. “Git away fae thair! Git away! Fukin thief!” before he opens the tin she catches him and begins to get very aggressive and swears (not what you would expect from an elderly woman.) It becomes apparent to the reader she is hiding something through her sudden change of character. However the idea of her having drugs and potentially being a drug dealer somewhat differs from the typical stereotype of a granny. Irvine Welsh uses her character to play against the typical stereotype through her use of slag language “Cook up a shot then, make yourself useful.” Stereotypically you wouldn’t expect an old woman to understand much about taking drugs never mind encourage their Grandson to stay on them. Also the way she reacts to her grandson finding her stash, she suggests that it’s a good thing and that they can work together basically, all this plays with the reader’s mind to realise just how strange the whole situation is. Welsh works hard at the beginning to portray her as a typical old woman to then later surprise us. He does this by making her seem very concerned that her grandson may be involved with drugs and that she feels very strongly against drugs. It’s also ironic that all throughout the text she keeps saying to him that he is an “Abercrombie” and reminding him he is family then at the end when it turns out he is on drugs and she is a dealer she again says “Yir an Abercrombie right enough.” Suggesting because of the drugs he really is one of the family.
“Where The Debris Meets The Sea” is a similar text to “Grannies Old Junk” in that the reader is questioning is there any reality in these unique characters Welsh creates? This text brings across the idea of a group of celebrities, including Madonna and Kylie, reading magazines together and talking about who in the magazines they would “shag”. Irvine Welsh is swapping the characters into different lives, he has the celebrities talking about going to Leith to see this man “Deek Pretice fi Gilmerton.” When usually it would be men from the likes of Leith dreaming of meeting the celebrities. The language used contributes greatly to the insanity, Welsh uses Scots dialect which contributes to the role reversal as they sound like typical Leither. “Phoah! Ah’d shag the erse oafy that anyway.” And “Total fukin ride. Ah bet eh’s hung like a hoarse.” This is totally goes against expectations the reader has of the celebrities would act and talk. The stereotypical celebrity is rich and has everything they want, they may not all be posh however their language in interviews etc isn’t anything like that. So to suggest the idea of people as famous as Madonna and Kylie, who are themselves usually in the magazines, lusting after some nobody from Leith, Welsh is totally crossing all lines of reality. Today’s celebrities have everything in the world they could want from their money, as if they would need or possibly want someone from the magazines Welsh has them reading when they usually have footballer, movie star or some other form of major famous guys anyway. He is creating these totally unique characters. Again like in “Grannies Old Junk” the title is fairly significant, it suggests its where the less important, “Debris”, meets with the so called upper class which would be “The sea”. It is suggesting where different people from different classes in society meet.

In each of the short stories Irvine Welsh uses the language to break down typical stereotypes. Mainly through swearing, usually people don’t associate that with a granny, and the talk of sex from the celebrities is so crude, it’s not what you’d expect to hear the likes of Madonna say about someone from Leith. “Ah thoat, fuck me, ah’d gie ma eye teeth tae get ma gums around that.” It is however to some perhaps how they would expect someone from Leith to talk which is how Irvine Welsh has almost swapped the characters role in “Where the Debris Meets the Sea.” Again it’s the typical stereotypes of class.
Irvine Welsh creates unique characters in each text, “Grannies Old Junk” and “Where the Debris Meets the Sea.” His word choice and language used creates a scene that the reader wouldn’t realistically imagine with characters which jump out against there typical stereotypes. The chosen language is perhaps even offensive to some which emphasises even more to what extreme Welsh is breaking down the stereotypical characters. Each text’s characters challenge the typical stereotypes of today by suggesting things that most people would see as very unrealistic and impossible. Welsh has un underlying message in each story, we perhaps stereotype people to much and cant see past the false impressions we have of them from listing them off as “just an old woman” .Overall through the disbelief of the characters each of Irvine Welsh’s stories are very comical and carries a deeper message of how little we actually know about others.

Steph