Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gone Girl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Secrets and Lies
Marriage
Misogyny
Writing, Storytelling, and Narrative
Summary
Analysis
Amy writes about how there has recently been a change in Nick after many months of sadness, tension, and even anger between them. Last week, they had sex for the first time in months, and Nick has been leading Amy around town on a “full tour of his boyhood haunts,” like she’s been asking him to do since they moved to Carthage. It seems their love for one another has been renewed. Amy has found herself wondering what the “catch” is—she wonders if maybe he just wants more money for The Bar, since last week caught him rifling through their shared box of important files. Amy tells herself she’s being “crazy,” and vows not to “let [her] worst self ruin [her] marriage.”
The present timeline in Carthage and the past timeline of Amy’s diary entries are constructed to be at odds with one another. As things get more complicated for Nick in the present, they grow less complicated for the Nick and Amy of days gone by. Flynn—and by proxy, Amy—orchestrates this dissonance in order to keep readers guessing, constantly unsure of what the truth of Nick and Amy’s marriage could be.
Themes
