Critical Analysis FTW: Marabou Stork Nightmares

Violence and brutality permeate Irvine Welsh’s novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares. The protagonist of the work begins the long and sordid tale from within the depths of a hallucinogenic coma, beginning a lengthy cycle of masking reality through escapism. As the narrator of the novel, Welsh’s Roy Strang tells the story of his life, carefully whittling away the most painful details of his experiences to present a version of his own story that he is able to cope with. Truth hides on the deepest levels, in Roy’s fantasy dream-world, and while some details are revealed in a point by point narration of Roy’s life as he remembers it, the darkest and most sinister realities only come to light during Roy’s ever-increasing moments of lucidity. The violence ingrained in his home life and upbringing soon pull to the surface not only his own repressions, but also the cyclical nature of the violence itself and the repressive nature of a social consciousness that seeks to conceal the brutality inherent in its own culture by deflecting, as Ray does, to a labeled villain.

Roy Strang is already hiding as the novel begins. Meandering through a dream world by the force of his own sheer will, Roy stubbornly refuses to confront his own past. “I do not wish to remember where I was before,” he declares. “I am averse to my past; it is an unsavory blur which I have no wish to attempt to pull into focus” (Welsh 4). This situates the deepest levels of Roy’s denial; when locked in his fantasy realm as a hero hunter in Africa, he avoids all references to his past, not only out of fear of resurfacing but also because they are “unsavory” to him. This Roy – the hero – recognizes the vileness of his own previous lifestyle and is desperate to try and disassociate.

In his dream-world, Roy is able to completely remove the less savory parts of his own personality and past from his sense of self. This “badness”, once removed, takes on a life of its own in the form of a Maribou Stork. “The Stork’s the personification of all this badness. If I kill the Stork I’ll kill the badness in me. Then I’ll be ready to come out of here, to wake up, to take my place in society,” (Welsh 9-10) Roy explains; this is the closest he comes to recognizing the truth while in the dream state.
This same sort of denial is prevalent in the society that Roy lived in prior to the suicide attempt that had relegated him to his coma two years prior to the beginning of the narration. That “badness” that lurked at Roy’s core was ignored; with the proper words and gestures, it was deflected to another source, as if it could be just so easily removed from Roy himself. The earliest instance of this takes place in the middle-level narrative, which consists of Roy’s edited reminiscences of his past. After stabbing a play-yard bully three times with a hunting knife, Roy easily escapes punishment by presenting the proper face. “I simply spoke nicely to them all. After all, I was now Roy Strang, a hard-working, intelligent pupil; university material” (Welsh 97). Roy describes this as a “role” he played, and would continue to play well into his adult life. While as a child, Roy can recognize this as a false front, as he gets older it becomes more and more a refuge for him to hide in and disassociate from his violent lifestyle. Society itself is inclined to believe the false front, wishing to deflect the “badness” onto an outside source – in this case, blaming the unfortunate stabbing victim, Tam Mathews. “He was a bully and a thug” (Welsh 97), so classified by his own teachers; Tam Mathews was society’s Marabou Stork.

The “hard-working / university material” façade that Roy uses to his advantage as a child becomes, in his later years, his permanent mask. His true face is hidden not only from the outside world, but also from Roy himself. In spite of the promise he often touted to separate himself from his dysfunctional family life, Roy’s path leads him to fall in with what his employer would later refer to as a “soccer hooligan gang” (Welsh 146); brutally violent and seemingly without conscience, Roy still continues to keep himself separate from the crowd in his own mind, though he willfully engages in all of their aggressive activities.

“It seemed as if I’d been surrounded by latent and manifest violence all my life” (Welsh 134), Roy muses. This much is true; growing up in a home rank with physical violence and mental abuse, as well as being exposed to sexual molestation as a child, have formed the Roy the world came to know: a violent, cruel man prone to fits of rage and deep depression and remorse. It is the remorse that would lead Roy to, once again, begin deflecting his own “badness” onto an outside source. In his days with the cashies, supposed ringleader Lexo became the Marabou Stork.

Roy is ripped from his dream-world by the obtrusive memories of the part he played in the vicious gang-rape of a young woman a the hands of Lexo and their cashie cronies, Ozzy and Dempsey. “It was LEXO, no me, LEXO” (Welsh 259) Roy shrieks in his own mind, terrified and disgusted by what he had done. Through his personal narrative of the even, Roy had stripped away portions of the truth and assigned the most evil acts to Lexo as to shield himself, insisting that his interactions were “pretend” (Welsh 190).

Society would once again play a role in shielding Roy from punishment, as well as from facing what he had done. With an act of violence present, the court system – and, in turn, the social consciousness as a whole – had chosen its villain. Rather than blaming the violent, rowdy band of cashies, it was the victim, Kirsty, who became the Marabou Stork.

Roy puts on his public persona for the trial, his “hard-working / university material” façade, and the act is replicated by the other members of the game. Lexo, who Roy had painted as the ringleader in his own mind, became “Alex Setterington, businessman” (Welsh 207), “a choir-boy with a baleful, slightly nervous and bewildered expression” (Welsh 208) and the others followed suit. In court, and “badness” was deflected onto Kirstie. “It became like she was the one on trial; her past, her sexuality, her behaviour” (Welsh 208). Society had already been set against Kirstie from the start. “The offence of rape is extremely unlikely to have been committed against a woman who does not show signs of extreme violence” (Welsh 223) reads a police handbook, that goes on to instruct a full interrogation of the victim, who is treated as a suspect. This is the dark reality of society, the willingness to disbelieve what it finds distasteful or, as Roy had put it, “unsavory” (Welsh 4). Instead, this “badness” is deflected onto Kirstie, and the victim becomes the villain.

Like Roy’s public persona, society itself launches its own façade to guard against what could be regarded as detrimental treatment of victims of sexual violence: the Z campaign. A series of ads, proffering slogans such as “There is no excuse” and “No man has the right” are posted in public in an effort to staunch the steady flow of sexual violence becoming ingrained in society. And yet still, subsequent victims such as Kirstie are blamed for the violence committed against them.
False fronts and facades are finally removed when Roy reaches his nearest moments of lucidity and hears Kirstie speaking to his comatose form. “You wanted me to see Roy Strang. You want me to feel what happens to any cunt who fucks about with Roy Strang” (Welsh 259), she tells him, and the unreliability of Roy’s narration becomes clear. He had been lying – to himself, to his family and to society – about what he had done, and who he was. He had been the worst of the group, brutalizing Kirstie without thought or care. Only after did he care, when the remorse and regret had relegated him to suicidal depression. And only by the confrontation of Kirstie, the rape case’s Marabou Stork, was Roy able to admit not only what he had done, but the degree of the horrors he had faced himself.

In his dream-world, reality crashes with fantasy and Roy see the truth. He had said before: “I’ve met that Stork before, in a previous life perhaps, and I know that it’s evil” (Welsh 13). His carefully constructed façade is shattered and he realizes that the Stork he was chasing had been his own self all along. Society’s ignorance had relegated Kirstie to her own Stork role and she embraced it fully, systematically eliminating those that had wronged her one by one, just as Roy had done as a child with Tam Mathews and scores of others. “Power always goes on and on until it finds its limits” (Welsh 28); Roy had passed his assumed violent power to Kirstie through his barbarous act. She in turn would pass it on to another, as society itself creates another villain – another Stork – by ignoring a victim’s plea.