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
Nick calls Tanner to tell him seven unbelievable words: “I think my wife is framing me.” Tanner doesn’t seem to believe or disbelieve Nick—he simply tells him to get some rest and wait for Tanner’s arrival in the morning. Go pops two sleeping pills and goes to bed, but Nick stays up. At nearly midnight, there is a knock on the door—Nick answers it to find Andie standing there. He yanks her inside and tells her she’s going to “put [his] neck right in the fucking noose.” As Andie chastises Nick for not calling, he wishes he could “smack” her.
Nick enjoyed Andie’s attention for a while—it made him feel like in spite of all the bad press and misery of the investigation, someone still wanted him. Now, though, Nick sees Andie only as a liability, and the misogynistic cruelty and violence he’s been trying so hard to convince everyone doesn’t exist within him at last comes out.
Themes
Nick tells Andie he’s hired a layer—whose advice is to break things off with Andie. Andie keeps saying she “need[s]” Nick, and is “scared all the time,” but Nick has no sympathy for her. Andie suggests she and Nick go to together to the police to give them Nick’s alibi, but Nick doesn’t want to. He tells Andie they need to end their relationship out of “decen[cy].”
Nick once threw away his marriage and risked his freedom to be with Andie—but it’s almost as if a switch has flipped, and he now regards her as insignificant and burdensome.
Themes
Andie is disgruntled and angry, and accuses Nick of having used her for sex. She asks Nick “what kind of man” he is and calls him horrible names before storming out of the house. Nick realizes that Andie will soon tell other people about their affair, and that news of it will “spread like an infection.” Nick tries to stand in front of Andie and stop her from leaving. She slaps at him and pushes past him, biting him when he tries to grab her.
Nick wants it both ways—he wants Andie out of his hair, but he wants her to keep quiet. He realizes, in this passage, that he must have one or the other—and he has already scared Andie off so definitively that he knows it’s just a matter of time before she leaks the truth.
Themes
