NAPATSORN TREESAP

Normal People was written by Sally Rooney, an Irish novelist who graduated from Trinity College. The story is about a young couple named Marianne and Connell who met each other in School. Connell’s mother works as a cleaner at Marianne’s house, which makes Marianne and Connell see each other often and fall in love. However, the relationship status has to be secret because Connell is popular in high school contrasts with Marianne. In contrast, a thing turns different when Marianne became popular at college while Connell is just a normal guy.

Why Normal People teaches us so much about love? That was the question that popped up in my head after reading a whole book in a week. I remembered it was a typical day when I scroll through my Instagram and discovered a post about Normal People that contains a quote,

“Marianne, he said, I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made
you for me.”

Sally Rooney, Normal People

This quote made me want to find this book to read and to see if it is good as many critically acclaimed or not, and after I read it for a while, I discovered that even though it is romance fiction like the others, it contains a completely different lesson that is very valuable and left a question in my head to think further about some issues in the story.

The issue that comes up in my head is the social expectation toward the couple. Love is not enough when society steps to be a part of love life.

Connell did not dare to face other opinions and criticism about having Marianne as his girlfriend, so this became a toxic relationship when these two characters have to keep their status secret. To think about this issue, when did society become a part of humans’ love lives? When did people start to judge how each one fit with each other by their appearances other than their love? And these questions lead to the point that humans tend to care for other people’s happiness and comfortable than themselves.

We could see in the story that even if the protagonists, Marianne and Connell, have broken up so many times, they still get back to each other because each one could not move on completely which makes me think about the situation of many people in the present time, why do couple still be with each other even though it is a toxic relationship?

For me, that person might be the one who understands their partner the most. Maybe they feel comfortable living with each other. So, I believe that everyone has their own reasons, so we should not judge them from what we see outside. Love is difficult, and it would be more difficult a hundred-fold when we have to walk out of someone’s life while we still are in love with them completely. Therefore, I think Normal People should be one of the books that people read.