PAG.200 OF NORMAL PEOPLE

• The beginning of the chapter is set in a psychological world attended by Connell, who is depressed because he has lost hope with his friends and he is pessimist about the future.
• Sally Rooney has decided to tell the reader about what happened in March 2014, using certain narrative strategies: for example choosing a 3rd person narrator who speaks from Connell's point of view. The narrator wants the reader to visualize the scene and therefore the narratro priviledges the description. (description is a break in the narration).
• Connell does not feel at ease. What creates this impression in the reader? The impossibility to find a seat, the coffee table too much low, the use of "awkwardly", the tear left in the paper.
• Connell is emotionally involved and disorganise in his mind and in his place since he "pierces the page with his ballpoint pen and leaves a tiny tear in the paper".
• He is filling up a questionnaire and while the answer to the first question is awkward, in the second one he decided to circle statement 2 even if he feels better with the content of statement 3 (he feels his future is hopeless and will only get worse). However, he cicled statement 2 because he did not want to alarm the psychologist. This underlines he cares about other people's opinion. In particular, the choice of the verb "to alarm" highlights an instinctive danger.
• "its syntax seems to have originated inside him": the sentence underlines he has an intimate relationship with language since he is a student of Literature.
• "life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head": the sentence puts into focus the new concept of time, which is typical in the Modernism.