Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Normal People, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Inexperience, and Emotional Intensity
Identity, Insecurity, and Social Status
Miscommunication and Assumptions
Money, Class, and Entitlement
Summary
Analysis
Marianne is studying in Sweden. She spends her time writing emails to Joanna and video-chatting Connell. After she broke up with Jamie over the summer, most of her friend group took his side—largely because he told them bad things about her. She’s now seeing a Swedish guy named Lukas, who’s a photographer. He doesn’t actually know that much about her, but he doesn’t seem very interested in her life anyway. She told him she was a writer when they first met, though she’s not sure why. When they have sex, they play what Lukas calls a “game,” in which Marianne can’t speak or look at Lukas until he says so. Sometimes the “game” extends after they finish having sex. He says bad things about her, and if she breaks the rules, she gets punished.
Outside her relationship with Connell, Marianne’s love life often seems to revolve around the act of submission. In other words, she tends to find her way into relationships in which she prioritizes the other person, especially in sexual situations. Again, the novel doesn’t necessarily cast a negative judgment on rough sex, domination, or sadism, but it does subtly suggest that Marianne seeks these things out in unhealthy ways, since she doesn’t actually seem to enjoy them. When Lukas says bad things about her, for instance, he most likely confirms her insecurities in a way that probably doesn’t help her overall sense of self-worth.
Themes
Marianne goes to Lukas’s apartment so he can take nude pictures of her. As he fiddles with his camera, she thinks about the falling out she had with Peggy after her breakup with Jamie. Peggy claimed she was Marianne’s best friend, but she ended up siding with Jamie. Joanna is really the only one she keeps in touch with. She also didn’t go home for Christmas, hoping to avoid the tension that always hangs over her house during the holidays. But when she told Connell she wouldn’t be coming home, he said that Christmas wouldn’t be the same without her, and she felt like crying.
At the beginning of college, Marianne seemed to enjoy having a large friend group for the first time in her life. But just because she had friends didn’t mean they were good ones, which becomes overwhelmingly clear when Peggy sides with Jamie instead of her, despite Jamie’s obvious mistreatment of Marianne. As a result, she’s isolated from her original group of friends and is even more isolated by virtue of the fact that she’s living in Sweden for the year, creating a sense of loneliness that’s only heightened by Connell’s kind comment that Christmas won’t be the same without her.
Themes
Lukas tells Marianne to take off her bra. He then approaches her with a ribbon, intending to tie her up, but she tells him she doesn’t feel like it. After a moment, though, she holds out her arms and lets him tie her wrists. Then he gets another ribbon for her feet. Again, she says no but then relents. Finally, he blindfolds her and says that he loves her. Suddenly, she thrashes away, hitting her head on the nearby wall. She demands to be untied and threatens to call the police. Lukas unties her and she gets dressed, telling him never to talk to her like that again. In an effort to make her stay, he tells her she’s a talented writer. She laughs, tells him she feels nothing for him, and leaves.
It's a sure sign that Marianne and Lukas’s relationship isn’t healthy when Marianne says she doesn’t want to be tied up but then lets him do it anyway. She clearly isn’t interested in their rough play, at least not in any healthy way. On a certain level, she appears to understand that their relationship isn’t healthy, since she reacts so strongly to him saying that he loves her—she’s not in this relationship for love. She’s in it because it validates her insecurities; she once suggested to Connell while talking about her relationship with Jamie that she felt like she deserved to be treated badly during sex. The same idea applies to her relationship with Lukas: she doesn’t like being with him, but she secretly thinks she deserves to be in such a toxic relationship. As soon as he says that he loves her, then, their connection is worthless to her, as it no longer confirms her suspicion that she’s unlovable.
Themes
