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 that she has never felt more “alive” in her life. Earlier this morning, she threw up—she ran to the store to get a pregnancy test, took it, and found that she was with child. She ran to Noelle’s house to deliver the exciting news right away, but now, back in the quiet of her home, she feels “scared” again. She begins crafting a treasure hunt for next week’s anniversary, planning to lead Nick to an antique wooden cradle at the end. She also laments that she was unable to secure a gun at the mall.
Amy is describing the early days of her pregnancy as an exciting time which enlivens and emboldens her—yet in Nick’s memories of Amy, she is coldly disinterested in the idea of children. These two things can’t possibly both be true—tipping readers off to the increasingly deep cracks and divergences in Nick and Amy’s accounts of their lives together.
Themes
Amy knows that her “value” to Nick has decreased. She is nearing forty and has lost her fortune. Still, she knows she won’t get an abortion, and won’t yet give up on her marriage to Nick. She dreams of how happy they’ll be together once she convinces him to be excited about the baby—but also admits that she could be “very wrong.” Sometimes, when Amy catches Nick looking at her with disgust and boredom, she thinks to herself, “This man might kill me.”
This diary entry ends on a dramatic and decidedly macabre note as Amy, for the first time, admits that she believes her husband may murder her if things between them get any worse. This narrative wrench seems to clinch Nick’s guilt—which is exactly what it’s designed to do.
Themes
