Here, Renton understands that they, like his parents, have kept the pattern of violence going, by the narratives they tell themselves and by denying what they know to be true.
Renton also understands that the pattern will continue with Begbie’s child when he states: ‘Franco’ll be indifferent tae the perr wee cunt. It’ll be a smothering, indulgent, unquestioning, forgiving love, which will ensure that the kid turns oot tae be jist like its daddy. That kid’s name wis doon fir H.M.Prison Saughton when it was still in June’s womb, as sure as the foetus of a rich bastard is Eton-bound. While this process is going on, daddy Franco will be whair he is now: the boozer’ (214-215). Once again, there is no hope for the people in the novel. The fact that…show more content… He is a lifelong criminal, and steals a car at the age of ten. However, in court, the judge can barely suppress ‘a laugh while reprimanding Vinnie and making him promise never to do such a bad thing again’, but he does and once again ‘it was impossible for a judge to think of him as a criminal and they were hesitant about sending him to an institution where he might learn to be a thief rather than just a mischievous boy’ (16). Again, stories and constructions of what it means to me ‘male’ take precedence over deviant behavior. It is also ironic that the judge thinks by sending him to institution, Vinnie will become more criminal, when in reality it is the insular community with its ‘hard man’ mentality that further shapes Vinnie into the criminal that he becomes, when he steals a car at the age of 16, and is given a jail sentence which he looks upon in pride. He also knows two men involved in a stickup and states he ‘ran the yard’ with the man, and ‘The glory of having known someone killed by the police during a stickup was the greatest event of his life, and a memory he cherished...at the end of a disappointing life’
