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
Connell goes to a party alone at Trinity College in Dublin. He only knows the person who invited him, Gareth, but he can’t find him anywhere, so he wanders through the party feeling awkward. He didn’t want to go, but Lorraine urged him on the phone, saying it would be a good opportunity to meet people. Just before Connell is about to leave the party, Gareth comes up and greets him. Connell doesn’t particularly like Gareth, who seems a little pretentious and is involved with numerous clubs on campus. Everyone, it seems, knows Gareth and is eager to be in his orbit. Connell has a hard time getting along with people like Gareth, finding that the students at Trinity like to show off their intelligence in intimidating ways.
The fact that Lorraine told Connell that going to the party would be a good way to meet people suggests that he has had a difficult time making friends in college. To that end, he finds the other students intimidating, so it makes sense that he’s not having a particularly easy time getting to know them. He is, after all, quite shy. Now that he’s removed from the social hierarchies in Carricklea, he experiences what it feels like to not have any friends—he experiences, in other words, a small taste of what Marianne faced in secondary school.
Themes
Connell spends a lot of time alone these days. He lives in a small apartment off campus with his roommate Niall. He gets along with Niall, but he doesn’t know many other people. Back in Carricklea, it didn’t matter that he was shy because everyone already knew him. Now, though, he doesn’t know how to present himself to others. He goes home every weekend because he has a job in Carricklea, so he’s not used to going out in Dublin. At the party, Gareth is surprised to learn that Connell is from County Sligo, since Gareth’s girlfriend is from there, too. Connell doesn’t make anything of this coincidence at first, but then Gareth brings him outside and introduces him to his girlfriend. It’s Marianne.
Connell’s difficulty meeting people in Dublin stands in stark contrast to his popularity in Carricklea. In Carricklea, he was insecure about the idea of losing his popularity, but now he has a much simpler problem: he’s having trouble making friends. His difficulty stems from the fact that he’s quite shy. He didn’t have to establish himself as someone worthy of attention in Carricklea because he had grown up with his friends, so all he had to do was maintain his public image. Now, though, he has to create that public image from scratch—a daunting prospect, even if it also gives him the opportunity to cultivate an identity that actually aligns with his interests.
Themes
Too startled to say much, Connell asks Marianne when she started smoking, since she has a cigarette in her hand. Marianne, who is surrounded by friends, ignores his question and explains to everyone that she and Connell went to school together in Carricklea. She then offers to get him a drink, and though he already has a beer, she says she’ll get him a glass and tells him to follow her inside. As they leave the others, Marianne tells them over her shoulder that she’ll be back in a moment, and from her tone Connell can tell that she’s well-liked.
Connell and Marianne have, in some ways, switched positions. Unlike in secondary school, Marianne is the popular one now, whereas Connell doesn’t have many friends. The situation thus recalls the conversation they had the previous spring, when Connell joked that Marianne would probably pretend not to know him if she saw him on campus at Trinity. Marianne said she would never do such a thing, and now she proves that she was telling the truth by showing him kindness at a party where he otherwise feels completely out of place. In other words, she shows him the compassion that he should have shown her in secondary school.
Themes
Once alone, Marianne and Connell catch up. They talk about Gareth, laughing about how he’s a “campus celebrity.” Marianne tells Connell that she’s missed him, and he says the same. She then asks if he’s still with Rachel, and he tells her that they broke up over the summer. When she says she’s sorry to hear this, she almost sounds sincere.
It's to be expected that Marianne and Connell’s first conversation since leaving secondary school would be a little tense—after all, they didn’t end on particularly good terms. In fact, it now becomes clear that Connell ended up dating Rachel, despite the fact that he insisted at the time that they were just friends. He therefore validated Marianne’s insecurity about him going to the dance with someone else.
Themes
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Connell was upset when Marianne left school. Everyone noticed the change in his mood—teachers even talked to him about it, and his guidance counselor said she was worried. To avoid thinking about Marianne’s absence, he tried drinking a lot and having sex with other people, but he found these things depressing. Then, in the middle of the summer, he and Rachel started dating. She would talk to him while they got ready to go out with friends, but she’d get mad because he wouldn’t listen—and it was true, he didn’t listen to her, and he hated himself for that. The problem, though, was that she didn’t usually talk about interesting things.
Although Connell dated Rachel, it’s evident that he didn’t do so because he actually had feelings for her. Rather, he was just trying to make himself feel better about losing Marianne. He tried getting drunk and having casual sex as a way of coping, but these things clearly didn’t help him, so he turned to Rachel—but that didn’t work, either. The unfortunate thing about this attempt to feel better is that he ended up treating yet another romantic partner unfairly, ultimately failing to show Rachel true affection.
Themes
At the Debs, all of Connell’s friends got drunk. He was drunk too, but he still looked down on them for being inebriated. At one point Rob showed him and Eric naked pictures of his date. Eric laughed, but Connell pointed out that it was a bit “fucked-up” of Rob to show them these photos. Rob got annoyed and made a nasty remark about how Connell had been acting different lately.
The difference between Connell and his group of popular friends becomes quite stark after he no longer has Marianne, who reaffirmed his sense of self (albeit secretly). He and his friends have opposing values, but he has mostly been able to ignore their differences. Now, though, he has felt what it’s like to spend time with someone with whom he’s truly compatible, so it’s harder to overlook the things he doesn’t like about his other friends—like, for instance, Rob’s willingness to violate his date’s privacy in order to look cool in front of Eric and Rob.
Themes
Later that night, Connell went outside for a cigarette and Eric followed him out. After a moment, Eric said it was too bad Marianne didn’t end up coming to the dance. Connell didn’t reply, but then Eric asked him what was happening between them—everyone, it turned out, knew they were together. Connell was mortified, not because it was a big deal that he’d been with Marianne, but because it wasn’t. They could have dated publicly and nothing major would have happened. Connell left the dance after this conversation, failing to say goodbye to Rachel, who broke up with him not long after the dance. People went off to college, and Connell’s life in secondary school—a life that had felt so important at the time—ended just like that.
The realization that nobody would have cared if Connell and Marianne dated publicly is devastating to Connell because it highlights the fact that he ruined a promising relationship for no good reason. He treated her unfairly and deprived himself of happiness, all so that he could protect his popularity. But nothing about his social status would have changed if he’d been transparent about his feelings, ultimately highlighting how petty and meaningless his concerns were.
Themes
In the present, Connell and Marianne continue their conversation at the party in Dublin. He admits that he and Rachel weren’t suited for each other, and Marianne teases him by saying that she could have told him as much. But she couldn’t tell him, Connell points out, since she wasn’t responding to his texts at the time. That was just because she felt “abandoned,” she says, but he responds by saying that he also felt “abandoned.” He also clarifies that he never was romantic with Rachel until after he and Marianne were together.
As Connell and Marianne analyze the fallout of their relationship, they avoid talking to each other with outright hostility. Of course, Marianne certainly has a right to be angry at Connell, but she seems willing to move on, making light of the situation by playfully suggesting that she knew all along that Connell and Rachel weren’t a good match. When they both say they felt “abandoned” by the other, though, their conversation hints at the deeper, more serious things they felt in the aftermath of their relationship—things they don’t want to acknowledge outright but also can’t completely ignore.
Themes
Throughout their conversation, Connell feels as if maybe he and Marianne are flirting. They start joking about how it sometimes felt like Connell could read Marianne’s mind—when they were having sex, for instance, but also after they’d finished. He says maybe that’s just normal. “It’s not,” Marianne replies. In the ensuing pause, they both smile. Then Connell tells her that she looks good, and she jokes about how she had to wait until college to become pretty. He disagrees. She was always beautiful, he says. She likes hearing someone say that, she admits, causing Connell to wonder why Gareth never calls her beautiful—maybe he’s too busy with the debate team or something.
The conversations that Connell and Marianne have are often playful and indirect while also hinting at their deeper feelings for each other. For instance, Connell’s joke about being able to read Marianne’s mind turns into something a bit more serious when she suggests that their close connection isn’t something that everyone has with their partners. The implication here is that there’s something special between them. Despite the intimacy of this implication, though, they shift gears by joking about Gareth again, thus ensuring that their intense bond continues to lurk just beneath the surface of their interactions.
Themes
Marianne asks if Connell’s dating anyone. When he says he isn’t, she senses that he’s having trouble meeting people at Trinity, so she offers to introduce him to some girlfriends—“Yeah, I have those now,” she jokes. But he isn’t so sure, saying that maybe he wouldn’t be their type. When she asks what’s not to like about him, he loses himself in thought. He suddenly wants to apologize for treating her the way he did, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
The circumstances surrounding Marianne and Connell’s connection have drastically changed. Marianne is now the one with many friends. Unlike Connell in secondary school, though, she’s willing to introduce him to her group. It makes sense, then, that her offer would lead Connell to reflect on how poorly he treated her, since she’s currently showing him the kindness he should have showed her last year. Because he has trouble articulating his feelings, though, he can’t bring himself to apologize for how he behaved.
Themes
