"Might is right"?: Colonisation as a historical fact and literary metaphor in Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares

Abstract

This paper focuses on the theme of colonisation interlocked with a specifically-male desire for power in Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995). The novel elaborates in fictional and historical terms on the then Prime Minister John Major's policy on violent crimes in general and juvenile delinquency in particular, encapsulated in his statement used as the book's motto: "We should condemn more and understand less." The novel's narrator/protagonist, Roy Strang, is reduced to an apparent vegetative state after a failed suicide attempt committed as a result of guilt over his active involvement in a brutal gang rape of a young woman. Imprisoned in his unfeeling body, his mind seeks to assume control by conjuring up heroic fantasies of his hunting down and killing a specimen of marabou stork, a symbolic embodiment of evil. Intruding in his fantasy are memories of his time spent as a teenager in South Africa, where he first experienced the sensation of power as a member of the white colonisers, who were by default considered superior to the local black population. In the broader picture of national histories, Roy witnesses the exploited natives revolting and taking revenge on their oppressors, including the killing of Roy's uncle. On the small scale of individual lives, Roy sees the woman whom he raped taking an equally-violent revenge on her tormentors, including Roy himself. While the novel does not profess to offer an alternative solution, it illustrates that revolution does not equal revenge, which merely replaces one form of violence with another.