By Kamryn Anthis | Staff Writer
The way Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron in Sally Rooney’s Normal People weave in and out of each other’s lives during their college years, as they each struggle through the growing pains of life, encapsulates beautifully how it feels to transition into adulthood.
This novel paints a frustrating picture of Connell’s struggle with connecting and opening up, Marianne’s struggle with self-worth and their combined struggle to communicate and get on the same page, despite their shared desire to be together.
Marianne and Connell meet in high school, and the novel takes us through their college years, as they find each other and lose each other time and time again. It shows a perfect depiction of what it looks like to try and find yourself, while simultaneously straining to figure out how you relate to and communicate with others.
Marianne’s character is devastatingly complicated. We see how many of her problems in school stem from a loveless and cold childhood, and her constant feeling of being an outsider. Her vulnerability with Connell paints the picture of her tired heart and a desire to belong.
“‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ says Marianne. ‘I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people … I don’t know why I can’t make people love me. I think there was something wrong with me when I was born,'” Rooney wrote.
Connell, though coming from a loving home and relatively normal high school experience, struggles greatly to be real with himself and others. In a conversation with his therapist, Connell offers a tragic glimpse into his mindset as he tries to settle into university.
“‘I just feel like I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life … But I hate it here, and now I can never go back there again. I mean, those friendships are gone … I can never get that life back,'” Rooney wrote.
These characters have widely varied experiences in college, with Marianne finding connection after years of having none, and Connell feeling sharp loneliness after years of popularity. Regardless, their relationship, like waves in an ocean, flows back and forth unpredictably through the trials and tribulations of their youth.
“All these years they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions,” Rooney wrote.
These characters are able to recognize, though maybe not internalize, that their relationship has sustained them and shaped them throughout the years.
“It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone … and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions,” Connell says.
The social implications of Connell’s internal dissonance shape his ability to relate to others and form real connections. He describes himself often as feeling “nothing”, though it seems to the reader that he more so feels everything too strongly to grasp, often being crushed under the weight of his emotions. His conflicts within revolve largely around his inability to reconcile the person he was and the person he becomes.
Because of this, he clings to Marianne, as she does to him. But he is unable to be true enough to himself to offer her the stability she needs from him.
“Back home, Connell’s shyness never seemed like much of an obstacle to his social life, because everyone knew who he was already … If anything, his personality seemed like something external to himself, managed by the opinions of others, rather than anything he individually did or produced. Now he has a sense of invisibility, nothingness, with no reputation to recommend him to anyone,” Rooney wrote.
Spoiler alert: as much as they recognize the once-in-a-lifetime connection they share, Marianne and Connell do not end up together. He’s offered a job in New York, and despite his pleas for her to ask him to stay, she encourages him to go.
“He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again … Meanwhile, his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another. ‘You should go, she says. I’ll always be here.”
If you’re anything like me, this ending is truly devastating. These people loved each other so completely and consumingly, but that was simply not enough. It may be life’s hardest pill to swallow that unconditional love is not necessarily enough to be sustainable.
The oscillating nature of life complicates just about every aspect of being a college student. As two people who felt lonely in a crowded room, but never lonely together, Marianne and Connell somehow never managed to reconcile their internal conflicts pulling them apart.
“‘Marianne,’ he said, ‘I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes think God made you for me,'” Rooney wrote.
