Sally Rooney’s Normal People is a story driven by the quiet exploration of relationships and self-discovery. Both the novel and its television adaptation explore what it means to be human and how relationships function through misunderstandings, insecurities, and silences, through its main characters, Marianne and Connell. Normal People teaches viewers and readers alike the beauty in being human, especially when it means being vulnerable.
Normal People, on the surface, is a simple love story about Marianne and Connell’s relationship over the years. At its heart, this simplicity is a study of human connection through love, identity, and communication. Through Marianne and Connell’s story, Rooney finds power in the quiet, private, subtle moments. The two are shown together in the solace of Connell’s room at his home in Carricklea, in Marianne’s home in Ballsbridge, or her flat at Trinity College in Dublin, but these intimate moments are where the depth of the story unfolds.
At the beginning of the story, Marianne and Connell seem to be complete opposites. Connell, the popular Gaelic football player surrounded by friends, in contrast to Marianne, an introvert who’s often dismissed by her peers. Despite their differences, they are simply just two people searching for purpose and belonging. Rooney uses their intimate connection to explore what it means to truly be seen by another person.
Much of Normal People’s storyline unfolds through stolen glances and things left unsaid. Marianne and Connell are constantly being driven apart and brought back together through these silent moments. Their inability to express themselves properly, but trying to anyway, reveals the vulnerability that love requires even when it pushes you further apart. Rooney expresses the difficulty of being vulnerable and expressing your own needs through silence in intimate moments. A quiet pause in the story often says more than any dialogue could.
The story does what most don’t — takes off the rose-tinted glasses and shows love as it truly is. Love is about being human: it is not straightforward, but rather it is messy, uncertain, complicated, and most of all, fragile. Love is not just about being with another person, but to be with someone despite your own struggles and hoping to understand theirs. Through ordinary characters such as Marianne and Connell, Rooney portrays how the quiet moments, which are shaped by emotion, impact our lives on such a large scale. That emotion is evidence of our humanity.
Through Normal People, you begin to understand that imperfections, insecurities, and all the things you want to say but can’t, are not weaknesses but a sign of our humanity. Normal People teaches us that even in the worst moments, there is beauty in simply being human together.