ANALYSIS OF NORMAL PEOPLE

The book I am going to talk about in the textual analysis is “Normal People” by Sally Rooney.

To begin with, after reading the title, the reader may ask himself some intelligent questions as “Who can be consider a normal people?”, “Which main aspects does somebody need to have in order to be defined as normal?”, “Can I consider myself a normal people?”, “What does being normal imply?”, “What do normal people do?” 

There is no doubt that the title of the novel can be considered quite unusual because of the use of the adjective “normal” since it is a word that english people generally do not use. Despite this, being normal can be considered simply a quotation, something we have acquired during the years. If you stop thinking about what being normal really means, you may be surprised to find out that behave as a “normal” person implies somebody to follow what their society consider normal, ending up  behaving in a way that does not belong to them. This is the reason why most of the people, especially teenagers, hardly reveal their real nature and what they really like, because they are afraid of other people’s judgements and that their attractions might not follow the guide lines of their current society. This will be the crux of the novel and Sally Rooney will be able to deal with it thanks to the story of a relationship between two adolescents named Connell and Marianne. 

As already mentioned, the central relationship through which the story will be developed will be the one between Connell and Marianne, two teenagers setted in Ireland in the early 2010’s. Apparently so different, during the narration the two protagonists will reveal themselves more similar than they could imagine , both rich of fears and insecurities that will be managed in different ways. 

On one hand Marianne, a wealthy girl despised from all of her schoolmates and considered awkward because of her interests that do not fits with the ones of the other girls of her school and hated from everyone just because she likes to show off her intelligence in front of her classmates. She is also considered “an object of disgust” because of her aspect that does not follows the good- looking of the other girls. She generally likes to spend her free time reading books or studying, minding her own businesses. She is a very brave person and in spite of her traumatic childhood, she is not afraid to express what she really thinks about something. She is fatherless and she lives only with her mother Denise and her older brother Alan. From when she was younger, she has always been submitted to them in a brutal way. She was always the center of their offences and she was often pummelled by her brother or her mother. Unfortunately she has always had to deal with violence both verbal and physics, and when she became older, she started searching for that feeling of emptiness that was got used to when she was younger. This will be also one of the most important theme discussed by Sally in the novel. 

On the other hand Connell, a poor guy with a good reputation and considered from all of the people in the school as one of the most popular guy. He is constantly in search of approval and he lives with the fear of what people might think about him if he do not do as they want. This aspect of his behaviour shows how little freedom he has in order to do what he really wants, something that on the contrary, Marianne seems to have a lot, despite she is more complicated than him. Connell is full of friends who believe to know his most intimate sphere but what they really know about Connell is just what he wants them to know. The only person that knows Connell from the inside, is Marianne. When he is with her, he is not afraid of being judged and he feels free to behave as he does when he is alone. Thanks to this relationship, Connell is able to deepen his passion for reading and for the English letterature at the stage of acting bravely and signs up to the Trinity College, a school he really wants to attend, going against all of other people expectations. Indeed from the relation between them you can realise that they are really similar since both are very bright, Marianne openly and Connell secretly,  which explains part of the popularity gap between them but at the same time they have quite different personalities because Connell accepts everything that is accepted by the world he set himself in, Marianne on the contrary do not. 

Furthermore the starting point of their knowing is Connell’s mother Lorraine who is Marianne’s housewife. This is a crucial point in the novel because of the social extraction that there is between them therefore it is quite strange for Connell, who is very popular at school, to have a mom who works as an housewife for Marianne, who is considered as a loser, instead she is very rich. This is a relevant argument analysed by Sally Rooney during the novel and inasmuch as strange it may have seemed for the two guys, the worthy work of Lorraine is what have made them known about each other outside the school contest. From at first sight they both understand that there is complicity between them but Marianne is not able to show it in a correct way and Connell is too frightened that she is flirting with him as a mean-spirit to realise her difficulties to express her feelings.

In addition, S. Rooney builds their relationship shrewdly using the narrative technique of telling and showing unrolling the qualities and the nature of the protagonists equally during all of the novel and showing them mainly through their conversations and the judgements they give about themselves. The writer decided also to use a third person narrator with an informal register and the shift of the point of view in order to involve the reader in the story without fully influence his point of view. The main characters are built for antithesis and we can understand it thanks to the setting the writer decided to create since Connell is poor and Marianne is rich instead he is popular at school and she is not. 

Moreover the writer decides to placed them in indoors especially at his or hers house in Carricklea, Ireland and at her house in Dublin and this is really important because it allows the reader to focus on an intimate sphere, more personal between them. 

As said before the whole story is set in Ireland and the final part of the narration in the north of Europe. Sally Rooney decided also to prolong the story of Connell and Marianne for over four years, from January 2011 to February 2015 and this is clearly visible thanks to the accurate organisation of the chapters. Every chapter is named with a period of time es. six moths later etc. 

Undeniably, before have written this book, Sally Rooney, writer of “Conversation with friends”, the book before “Normal people”, has obviously read “Eveline” by James Joyce. It is one of the five-teen short story that compose the novel “Dubliners” written in 1914. You can see that there are some similarities between Evelyne and Marianne but also between Evelyne e Connell. Starting with the similarities between the two girls, you can see that both have experienced the death of a parent (the mother for Evelyne and the father for Marianne), both have a monotone life and are subdued to one of their parents. Both of them have experienced different ways of violence, Evelyne was submitted to a verbal violence instead Marianne both verbal and physics from both her mother and her older brother. This is also one of the most important theme spoken in “Normal people” where you can see how the violence comes back in every way possible in Marianne’s life, even if it is not from her family. Marianne, as a girl who was used to be submitted to violence, during her growth is going to search any kind of violence that could remind her of the feelings she felt when she was younger, as she deserves to be treated like an object. 

On the other hand, Evelyne is similar also to Connell in so many ways, for example both are frightened of what other people might think about them in front of what they want to do so they tend to live their life as the other people aspect them to do. 

“Evelyn” and “normal people” are also set both in Ireland. 

Summing up Normal People is not the simple kind of novel that anyone may expect to be about just after has reading the title. It is something more because it does not speak also about a relationship between the teenagers but the novelist uses it as a means to talk about more important topics as violence against women, the social gap and uncertainties for the future.