'In Marabou Stork Nightmares Irvine Welsh graphically portrays the impact patriarchal imperatives, norms and ideals exert on the psychological disposition of the underprivileged working-class youth'. Analyse Welsh's novel in light of this remark.

The first 200 words of this essay...

'In Marabou Stork Nightmares Irvine Welsh graphically portrays the impact patriarchal imperatives, norms and ideals exert on the psychological disposition of the underprivileged working-class youth,' (Berthold Schoene-Harwood). Analyse Welsh's novel in light of this remark.

The text I have chosen to focus on is Irvine Welsh's, 'Marabou Stork Nightmares,' as I have found it particularly interesting I comparison to the other novels. Irvine Welsh introduces us to the wildly active, albeit coma-beset mind of Roy Strang, whose hallucinatory quest to eradicate the evil Marabou Stork keeps being interrupted by disturbing memories of social and family dysfunction that brought him to this state.

In the novel Welsh portrays Roy as an anti-hero, someone that believes that violence is the answer when fighting to earn power and respect. This is something that Roy that Roy believes he is entitled to as a man, however, it is clear throughout the novel and it is also pointed out in 'The Dark Continent of Masculinity' that Roy is, ... 'under enormous pressure to assert himself as a man.'

As mentioned previously, power is a major theme and at different stages of the novel, different characters hold the power over others. There is