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‘Normal People’ and How Our Psychology Shapes The Way We Love
The Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s hit novel isn’t as interested in love as it is about the way we love and want to be loved.
Normal People follows the years-long on-again-off-again, will-they-or-won’t-they relationship between Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. However, to borrow a line from the opening narration of 500 Days of Summer, “this is not a love story.”
Yes, the story is essentially about two teenagers falling in love, but love is at most a secondary theme. Normal People doesn’t have that much to say about love that’s particularly unique or insightful. It does, however, separate itself from other “love stories” when it comes to exploring how our individual psychologies shape the way we love and how we desire to be loved.
In the first trio of episodes that follow Marianne and Connell when they’re in secondary school, Marianne is presented to us as a social outcast. She’s the butt of mean jokes and cruel insults, both privately and publically, by almost everyone at school — that is, everyone who talks to her. Hence, Connell stands out to her even more when he treats her like a real person. “Compared to most people he was actually pretty nice to…
