Skip to main content

Goodreads Challenge

 For the Goodreads challenge, I decided to read the novel Normal People by Salley Rooney. I had seen the show and remembered social media being a relatively prevalent catalyst in it, and after some research found it was the same in the novel. The novel specifically utilizes Skype (though not really social media, still a form of technological communication) and Facebook. The novel takes place in Ireland from about 2011-2015, so I was surprised that only Facebook was used, but concluded it was a specific choice made by the author. I believe that only using Facebook ensures that the intimacy between the characters is felt deeply by the reader- it is not lost to the noise of Instagram and Twitter. 

There are a few instances throughout the course of the novel where Facebook is utilized. One of the most powerful instances is during the death of Marianne's (one of the two protagonists) friend Rob. Marianne finds it absolutely disturbing how people use his personal Facebook page as a forum for public grief. She grapples with how to interact with these posts- especially the posts of people who barely knew him. She describes these posts as "performative." This is something I have experienced myself and I can relate to that discomfort. Is social media a place to display your grief? Part of me understands reaching out to a community experiencing the same grief as you, but another part of me understands Marianne's feeling of it being performative. It feels gross to see people hopping on a grief train for attention.

The novel also uses the concept of lurking on Facebook. The novel focuses on Marianne and Connel's on again/off again love story, from high school into adulthood. Connel, the other protagonist, lurks on Marianne's Facebook and finds her fitting in at college. She seems happy and popular, something very different from her life in high school where she had few friends and was isolated. Connel, on the other hand, was popular a well-liked, to the point that he was embarrassed for anyone to know about the two of them. His lurking reflects the difference in appearance and reality. Although Marianne looks happy on social media, she still battles depression and feelings of self-hatred, no matter what the photos on Facebook suggest. 

Overall, I think Rooney uses social media to enforce themes of reality versus appearance, implying that what you see on social media is not always what is happening in reality. It is an imperfect mirror of our lives and shouldn't be taken at face value. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts on the Education of Digital Natives

  Thoughts on the Education of Digital Natives   As M ay comes to a close, I am finishing my 8 th year as an educator in the public education system. I have worked as an ELA teacher for grades 6-12, taught Creative Writing and Journalism, and am finishing my second year as a media specialist in a middle school. I consider myself to be a digital native- we got our first computer when I was around 7 or 8 years old. However, I do think my experience with technology has been very different from my students because I have lived through the hyper-speed evolution of technology. Computers look very different now from when we got our first fa mily computer in the early 2000s, but the biggest difference is that most of my students do not start their technology journey with a computer, but with a cell phone.   One of the biggest gaps in digital education I see at the secondary level is a lac k of direct instruction on how to use technology effectively. I think that because our ...
2 comments
Read more

Thoughts from Middle Schoolers

  How do middle school students see technology as affecting their education and lives?  This week I decided to sit down and have some conversations with my students before releasing them for the summer. I asked them specifically how they felt technology had influenced their education and social lives. These were some of the responses I got, paraphrased from the general Gen Z vernacular: "I think that technology can be cool, but it can also be repetitive. Some teachers do the same things over and over, which gets old."  'I wish I could only be on my Chromebook all the time. It's more fun than anything else in class."  "I don't want technology to take over my life. I think the 90s were cool, people talked to each other more." "Okay, but I talk to people all the time, just on my phone."  "My chromebook helps me learn, I don't like doing book work because it is boring,"  "I like book work, I can understand it better."  ...
2 comments
Read more

Interactions with Social Media Pre-EME6414

  Interactions with Social Media Pre-EME6414 For my first post, it felt appropriate to think about the ways I already utilize social media. Currently, I have accounts on the following platforms: Instagram (since high school) Facebook (since high school) Threads (for about a year) BeReal (about two years) Snapchat (since high school)  Pinterest (since high school) Reddit (since high school) Logically, I know social media can be used professionally. It is a great way to form larger and more diverse learning communities for a variety of skills. Social media is a huge part of advertising and influencer as a career is at an all-time high. This is even reflected in our other cultural media. For example, the reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives exists because a group of women made a career out of TikTok, referring to it as "MomTok." However, I have very mixed feelings about the use of social media and do not use it to the extent that many people do. For me, doom scrolling o...
2 comments
Read more