Normal is overrated Anyways
Note: This article contains spoilers from Normal People (if you haven't seen it, go give it a watch and come back to read!).
Mixed communication is my nemesis, a symptom of being human that I try so hard to avoid – in people and in myself. I do find it ironic then that the ultimate downfall of the two main characters of my most beloved T.V. show is that they don't fundamentally know how to communicate. Sally Rooney’s, Normal People, is savoured for the times that I need a good cry, or when I feel like subjecting myself to some of the most raw and honest love on display. The struggle for individualistic identity is paramount within Marianne and Connell, complicated by the fact that they are trying to figure out each other at the very same time. Although Rooney knows how to construct a noteworthy love story, I wouldn’t be so quick to label this as one, but rather a study of love. A study of the way in which we are willing to give ourselves so willingly to another person, enough that we lose sight of who we are, what we want, and what we can become. I don’t aim to take a pessimistic stance on love nor do I think that Marianne and Connell couldn’t have made it work. However, the most beautiful part of the show, in my opinion, is captured when Connell mutters, “I’ll go,” and Marianne follows with, “I’ll stay. And we’ll be okay.” It perfectly encapsulates the idea that they may be connected forever, no matter where they go, but they must leave in order to find themselves.
The struggle to be like “normal people,” to be accepted and appreciated, while having a solid understanding of who you are as a person, is reproduced time and time again through the 12-episode series. Marianne reiterates that she doesn’t know why she can’t be like normal people, why she can’t make people love her, and why she is in a constant, agonizing search for something more meaningful than her current life. The show follows Marianne and Connell through their senior years in high school to their lives throughout college, as they fall out of touch, figure out life on their own for a while, and happen to cross paths again. While Marianne has visibly changed, with a new style, new friends, and most noticeably, a new boyfriend, Connell has stayed relatively the same. While Marianne changed almost everything outward about herself, she still struggles with self-esteem issues. Her poor self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness are notably exemplified through her masochist personality. Without any ounce of self-acceptance on either end, their relationship will never work – they both search for something that they cannot give each other.
The way many of us operate, fixated on a text back, obsessively checking one’s location, and who they follow/don’t follow back, is reflective of the world built around us. Constant means of communication leads to misrepresentation, and constant access to follower counts leads to misinterpretation. The power to build an identity online can be empowering; for someone like Marianne who doesn’t know who she is, she can figure it out without the fear of her high school classmates poking fun at her. However, fundamentally, at our core, can we truly be a person built online? Marianne and Connell are the blueprint for the idea that no matter how far you run from each other and who you don’t want to be, if you don’t look inwards and learn, you never really will change. Identity struggle is a conventional problem faced by those who are allowed to taste the tiniest bit of freedom, whether that be by moving away for school, ending a relationship, or trying your hand at a new career, but just like Marianne and Connell, it never seems to be solved by running from who you are.
If I’m going to do this storyline any justice at all, it would only be appropriate to note that it is just as much a coming of age story as it is one about love and lust. As I preluded to, I believe this is more so a story about love, rather than a love story at all. In fact, the two are so in love by the final scenes, that they have matured enough to understand why they can’t be together, for their own reasons. This takes a level of maturity that the Marianne and Connell who existed in the first episode would never have understood. As I watched this series for the first time, I desperately needed to know what happened after they went their separate ways. Did they find each other in New York, did Connell move back to Dublin, or did they cease to speak ever again? As I watched the series back a second time, and again for the third time, I came to understand that the beauty in their relationship is that we really don’t know how they turned out. In my mind, they took some years apart to fully understand what it was that they needed, outside the constraints of their family, friends, and predisposed notions of who they thought they should be. Marianne and Connell are living happily in the South of France, somewhere in my mind, and that’s enough for me. The very best love stories are sometimes the ones that have no definitive ending, and Rooney did an impeccable job at letting the viewer decide that for themselves.
The one facet of the show that never sat right with me – throughout numerous viewings – was the catastrophic downfall of the entirety of Marianne and Connell’s relationship, not just as lovers, but as friends. Apart from the self-doubt, insecurity, and anxiety, these two did not know how to properly communicate. Always out of touch by a second, always missed by a moment, they instead resorted to making tea. When I first picked up on this, I noted that it was strange how much tea they drank throughout this series, but it is produced by BBC after all. Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Marianne, commented that “they’re obviously both highly intelligent, and they can speak about big, big subjects,” she added, but, “on the simplest, simplest things they just seem to miss each other.” When they can’t find the words and they can’t agree on what to do, tea seems to be their answer, and it might just be a metaphor for what Edgar-Jones pointed out. They can never agree on the simplest of matters, so they resort to tea as common ground. A true work of art if I do say so myself.
After multiple rewatches of this show, I can confidently say that I’ll be hitting play on episode one later this week. Marianne and Connell’s relationship portrays the very best and the very worst of being in love, and the mutual understanding that it takes to put yourself first, unaware of what the consequences for doing so will be. Their relationship is defined by the struggle to figure out yourself while simultaneously figuring out another person, which is even more difficult at the stage of their lives that they’re both in. Although the two take differing approaches in how they choose to live their lives, Rooney never searches for a way to pit the two against each other, or to have the viewer take sides. She fully encapsulates the difficult yet different battles they face – both together and alone.
Although I’ll never be able to experience watching Normal People again for the first time, the complexities of their relationship will forever be a representation that there is no blueprint for love and no right way to do it. The show cannot be boiled down to one happy ending and neither can real life; it will always be more fulfilling to live a life you have created for yourself than one that you have created for the likes of others, and Marianne and Connell will always be a constant reminder of that.
Header by: Nathalie Gotz
