Where do you think Norman's arc will go from now (that he's met Emma and Ray)? Also, how do you think the story will end?
So, the two most important facts about Norman’s arc is that one, he’s the character of the trio between Ray and Emma with the least flaws, and two the majority of his arc has taken place offscreen. This is not a criticism, this is pointing out where the subversion with his character is going to come from.
So when analyzing Norman you have to take into account that both Ray, and Emma sort of believe Norman to have been the best of the group. Even if Emma is the moral fiber, it was Norman who did the vast majority of the planning for the escape. That was why Norman was taken away from them in the first place, for story purposes it was to show that it was in fact not all Norman which led to their success and both Ray and Emma are strong and capable in their own right. In the end all three of them are equals with equal capabilities.
However, the fact that Norman was taken from them and that he also chose to sacrifice himself resulted in both Ray and Emma sort of putting Norman on a pedestal. Especially when it came into terms with their perception of him and their assessment of themselves. While it makes sense for them to remember him in an idealized light when he sacrificed himself, now that it turns out he’s actually lived Norman the real person is going to compete with the image of Norman both of them have been carrying around this entire time in order to motivate their actions.
Norman not only put the inishing touches on him and Emma’s plan while knowing that he would die soon, but he also correctly predicted Ray’s actions and told Emma how to save him.
When they’re escaping, as he watches the scene in front of him Ray hallucinates Norman for a moment to come to terms with the reality of the situation. Norman also speaks what are probably just Ray’s own feelings on Emma that he himself can’t admit and can only see coming out of Norman’s mouth.
In the second arc when Emma has a near death experience after being shot, it’s Norman that she imagines as the one who stops her from falling and also swims up with her back to the surface. It’s his image that literally guides her back to life. Except, we know Norman is not a ghost that can magically appear to either of the two at the time because he’s still alive in both cases.
The trio is an extremely tight knit family, and they all believe in each other’s strengths of course, but of the trio we’re shown the least of Norman’s flaws, and that makes sense as both Ray and Emma admire him so much and this story is mainly told from the perspective of the children. Norman sort of becomes the symbol of their survival and escape, even though technically it’s never been Norman from the start, it was always Emma’s ideals of saving everyone, of escaping with their whole family that guided them and Norman was the one most driven to make those ideals a reality out of his love for Emma.
Not only do the characters in the story treat Norman as a symbol though, now Norman himself has taken on the role of a symbol leaving his original name aside and calling himself William Minerva instead. Someone who was a literal symbol, because he was a made up person that James Ratri created to inspire children to escape from the plantation system.
In the first chapter we’re reintroduced to Norman and his situation as posing as Minerva the entire chapter he’s drawn without a face while all of his followers for the most part are detailed. This is more than just to preserve the twist that Norman has taken to posing as William Minerva. It’s also symbolic of what Norman is doing, he’s casting his own identity aside and forcing himself to play a role which he thinks will be of greater benefit to everybody else in the long run.
He’s playing the role of an idealized hero, a children’s fairy tale hero when he still is just a child himself.
So, a lot of Norman’s role in the story is concealed but there’s some very important hints to take from the introduction of his character. While Emma is the ain character, remember it was originally Norman who was introduced as the supporting male lead, the one who found out about Connie at the same time, the one who promised to escape with Emma at the same time. It was originally Norman who made the promise to escape together with Emma.
And eventually instead it became Ray who escaped with Emma, while Norman sacrificed himself intending to die and be eaten there. What happened instead was a reversal of their situations. Ray had Emma, and the rest of his family as support while enduring the hardships of the next year, whereas Norman endured it all alone.
Norman had only one accomplice and even that person he failed to protect them during his escape, which he had to figure out how to escape from an entirely second plantation all on his own.
What I’m pointing at here is Norman is originally set up as the supporting character to Emma and the main one at her side, but he gets separated from her for the vast majority of the time after the first arc, and not only that but afterwards Norman had to endure a bunch of trauma all alone. His response to that however, has been to ascend to a position of power instead and make himself out to be the savior of the neverland, rather than showing any signs of being a traumatized kid who has been separated from his two closest friends and the rest of his family for a year and a half and forced through terrible human experimentation alone.
Now finally, returning again to the opening chapters, what exactly is Norman’s main flaw? Ray’s is his tendency to always rely on sacrifices, both himself and others and his willingness to dirty his hands, which combines with a low self image he has viewing himself as worth less than his two friends because of what he was willing to do and the guilt he had already carried. Emma’s flaw and strength are one in the same, her naivete and willingness to believe in others puts her in reckless danger but it also allows her to take paths that nobody else would try to take to save everyone, and also to not give up in circumstances where most others would give up. Emma is vulnerable and she constantly exposes herself to danger and that’s not something that can be brushed off easily in a world that’s constantly trying to kill them, but also it means that he wearing her vulnerability on her sleeve makes her the most emotionally developed and the empathic of the other two boys and because of that she’s able to easily imagine the situations of others and constantly tries to offer them to join her side. It’s Emma’s unrealistic dreams that drive the three to try to make the world into a better place.
Then, where are Norman’s flaws in that? In a way Norman seems to strike a perfect balance between the two. He’s calculating and cunning like Ray, and yet at the same time he also is somebody who wants to hold up Emma’s ideals. Even in the first chapter, Ray demonstrates that Norman has a critical thing when it comes to thinking that Emma is lacking.
Norman’s the smartest of the three, Ray can compete with Norman in terms of brains but he’s the most well studied. Ray even says so later that it’s not like he has raw genius he just studied his hardest even though he hated studying because he wanted to be a tasty meal that he could deny the demons. and Emma of the three is the most flexible because she’s constantly changing her ideals.
Also, not only that but the first tag match in the first chapter ends with a one on one battle between Norman and Emma. Which is clear foreshadowing that while Norman and Emma start out as each other’s closest ally, and Norman as Emma’s supporting male lead that eventually the two are going to disagree with each other and probably have to compete with each other which is why Norman was separated from the plot for so long and so much of him still remains a mystery.
In the 4th chapter, Norman gets some more foreshadowing to establish his flaws. The first thing is Norman mentions over and over again his main motiation is Emma, who Norman sees as a better person than him. (This is a theme with the trio gosh guys stop comparing yourselves to each other). Norman feels guilty for being scared only of his own life when Emma was crying not for herself but for the sake of her family. From that moment forward he swore to be the one to bring Emma’s ideals into reality no matter how far fetched they are.
Norman’s actually more logical and more driven by cold blooded reason than Ray, however Norman doesn’t wish to be like that so he makes most of his actions for Emma’s sake rather than following his own ideals. Norman’s statements in chapter four are rife with foreshadowing.
“I’ll use myself to accomplish it.” “I’ve always managed to accomplish what I set out to do.” “So, what are you going to do? Emma and I are insane. We’ve completely lost it.”
All of these statements which seem perfectly innocent at the time because they’re a part of Norman’s speech to motivate Ray, and his declaration of Love for Emma, but they’re also words in a different context that could take a much darker turn. The Promised Neverland tends to play the long game when it came to foreshadowing, reveals about the demons taking on the characteristics of what they eat that became relevant this arc were foreshadowed as early as the Goldy Pond arc where one demon ate the brains of another and then started to hear two voices in its head instead of just its own.
“I’ll do anything…” is a recurring theme for Norman.
At which point I must mention, the difference between Norman and Ray’s flaws. Ray is a pragmatist, he believes sacrifices are necessary and is willing to dirty his own hands to make those sacrifices. The difference in the flaw then lies in the ideals. Ray is a pragmatist, whereas Norman is still an idealist because he believes in Emma’s ideals to this day. Whereas Ray makes sacrifices for the sake of survival and accomplishing realistic goals, Norman’s flaw is that he’ll sacrifice to bring Emma’s lofty ideals into reality. He’ll do it for the sake of ideals.
And as early as the first arc, Norman is referred to as willing to do “Anything”. However, that was when Norman was surrounded by his family and in a much mentally healthier situation, so his definition of “Anything” has probably changed between then and now.
See Norman’s flaw is that his ideals aren’t his own, they’re Emma’s. Not only that, Norman is constantly criticizing himself for not being as selfless as Emma is in his eyes. Which is not really fair criticism that Norman is levying on himself, for example he gets upset when he a child gets afraid of dying.
He has trouble seeing with himself individually as a person, and dealing with his own weakness. Especially when he’s usually relied upon to be the level headed one of the three, the best of the three, the leader of the three, etc. etc. And his way of coping with his feelings of powerlessness in those situations is to go back to tactics.
So, when Norman gets more and more upset he tends to instead of working through those feelings buckle down and see everything as pieces on the board. He believes absolutely in every situation he can overcome with tactics and making use of everything around him. Not only that his appointed task is not even for himself and his own ideas but rather to make Emma’s dreams a reality because Norman doesn’t see himself as good of a person as he sees Emma as.
So, right away that’s a combination of 1) Norman having a natural tendency to go to extremes especially when it comes to using people, situations, and everything present to get what he wants out of a situation. and 2) somebody who adheres himself to ideals and is intensely dedicated to bringing those ideals into reality even if those ideals are not his own.
So, it’s easy to see why after being isolated from his two moral compasses and then traumatized in a child experimentation lab, that Norman’s way of dealing with this trauma and turning it into something productive another piece on the board has been to completely shed away his own identity as pose as someone else (Norman doesn’t really believe he’s a good person like Emma is), that person being the lofty ideal of William Minerva rather than an actual person, and two once again saying that he’s doing all of this to bring Emma’s ideals into reality.
Neither of these things are necessarily harmful on their own. WHen they’re together Norman and Emma make a good team, Emma being the one who makes the ideals and Norman the one who wants to use strategy and tactics to bring them to life. However, Norman has been separted from Emma for a long time and making these decisions all on his own, and there’s been a clear case in escalation in the stakes Norman is dealing with.
The first thing he does in the chapter he’s reintroduced in is burn a platnation to the ground with the comatose mass production children still inside. I’m not going to discuss the ethics of this, but Norman himself feels guilty for not being able to save those children which shows the weight he’s currently taking on his shoulders and the decisions he’s making.
So Norman in the year he’s been apart from his family has gone from, “I want all my family members to escape alive” to “Burn everything down to the ground and rebuild a paradise from the lost ashes”. I’m not making a moral judgement on Norman’s philosophy, especially since he’s rebelling against a fundamentally corrupt system based on child murder and human farming, however, his views are extreme and they’ve only become more extreme the more pressure he’s put on himself to carry out those ideals for every child he takes in.
So then you have the breakdown of the trio again. Emma, the reckless idealist, Ray the pragmatist, and Norman the extremist. Norman is now the most in the know, and the one of the group with the most resources but that doesn’t mean Emma and Ray are going to go along with him and follow out his plan.
Otherwise, the story would have been split up on focusing between Norman and Ray + Emma on their journey to reunite with one another. However, there’s one important thing to notice about this latest chapter.
Norman talks about again in front of Emma that all he wants is to make her dream come true, living with her family and being able to care for them in a world that’s not actively trying to kill them. This brings a smile to Emma’s face.
Then Norman says that he’s been preparing all this time to make Emma’s dream a reality, and not only after losing their base does he have a plant to do it, but he also has resources, contacts, and measures in place to carry it out. It sounds too good to be true, after losing their hideout and Yugo and Lucas, they find Norman again and the same old Norman who seems to have everything figured out and only wants the best or his family.
Yet, this is what Norman suggests.
Genocide, to simply wipe out all the demons and make this second world a paradise for humans, because if all the demons were gone there would be no reason to feed on humans anymore. And the author even takes the time to panel out Emma’s changing reaction, from a smile, to a hesitant face, to a slow look of horror.
This isn’t what Emma wants to do. Norman’s strayed far from Emma’s ideals in his methodology. Emma is going to reject his answer, because Genocide of an intelligent species is a net wrong no matter what ends you’re trying to accomplish with those means.
The kids have been killing demons all along, but can they really kill every single demon in order to build a world better for them? When things such as child demons and demons families exist? That’s what is weighing on Emma’s face. Her ideals are clashing finally with Norman’s need to go to extremes to bring those ideals into a reality and it’s going to cause a conflict between the two of them. That’s what’s registering on her face right now as Norman says with complete confidence all they need to do is wipe out every last demon to get the happy ending they want.
That’s the direction I think Norman’s arc will go from now on! Thank you for sending the ask, anon.
