Textual Analysis Of Filth

The first aspect of inspiration taken from Filth is the negativity and use of profanity throughout, however I found Filth to be so heavily laden with profanity and grotesque descriptions that I felt it became gratuitous. It served the purpose of drawing the reader’s disgust towards Bruce; the main character. I felt as though I would not use such language to quite the same degree because I wanted to create a somewhat likable main character when I came writing the first chapter of my novel. Moving on, the two other similarities between my work and Filth is the use of first person narrative and present tense. I have chosen to follow in the same style as Filth as I found it both choices particularly effective at providing a sense of unpredictability,
‘(SENTENCE 1) His blood fairly skooshes out, covering his face like an oily waterfall and driving me into a frenzy; I'm smashing at his head and his skull is cracking and opening and I'm digging the claw hammer into the matter of his brain and it smells but that's only him pissing and shitting and the fumes are sticking fast in the still winter air and I wrench the hammer out, and stagger backwards to watch his twitching death throes, seeing him coming from terror to that graceless state of someone who knows that he is definitely falling and I feel myself losing my balance in those awkward shoes and I correct myself, turning and moving down the old stairway into the street. (SENTENCE 2) Out on the pavement it's very cold and totally deserted.’ This is a very unusual case of such a technique and perhaps that is just as well, for a passage made only of alternate very long then short sentences would be no less tiresome than one constructed only of sentences of the same length. In this particular example it works. The length of the first sentence literally takes a reader’s breath away, forcing them to read very quickly thus heightening the drama, and it is a very dramatic event indeed; the brutal butchering of a helpless man, made particularly graphic by the fact that we, the reader, are inside the mind of the mad man responsible. The
This is usually used in reference to some person he is undermining with the rules being; there are no rules, he just does and acts as he likes. This particular quote shows a degree of his misogynous character and lack of respect to both Bladesey’s; his supposed friend, and Bladesey’s Wife, hence the ‘same rules apply’. Irvin Welsh has captured the little mannerisms of the main character well and in such detail we beginto feel we know and understand them, a feeling that is undermined the next time he does something