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, Tanner, Go, Sharon, and the rest of the people gathered in the suite watch Andie’s press conference. When it’s over, Sharon is visibly upset—Tanner apologizes for not being able to drop the “bombshell” themselves, but insists that Sharon interviewing Nick would still be valuable—Sharon can get Nick’s first reaction on tape. Sharon agrees to the interview, but warns Nick that he better have something very interesting to say.
Sharon Schieber and her team know that it’s important to craft the story they are going to be telling about their interview subject before the fact—Andie’s press conference has derailed their ability to control Nick’s narrative, but Nick has confidence that he can get things back on track.
Themes
The interview goes off without a hitch—Sharon adores Nick, and is openly flirtatious with him as she conducts the interview. Nick answers her questions well—he admits he’s not quite as prodigious a liar as Amy, but is “not bad when [he has] to be.” He prostrates himself for Sharon and her viewers, expressing simpering regret for his mistakes and promising that he would never kill his wife—and is desperate for her to come home. After the interview, everyone congratulates Nick on a job well done, and then they return to Carthage to wait for the interview to air the following evening. Back in town, however, the cops are waiting at Go’s house—with a warrant to search the woodshed.
Things seem to have swung in Nick’s favor as the interview concludes, and everyone is in awe of his ability to spin a convincing narrative and take control of his circumstances. Things take a turn for the worse, though, as the group arrives back in Carthage to find that the situation there is spinning out of control.
Themes
Boney and Tanner spar about Boney’s decision to allow Andie to give a press conference, and then Boney leads Nick out to the woodshed. Tanner follows along, trying to bait Boney with an “explosive new theory,” but she has no interest in hearing what he has to say. Boney and her team have broken open the doors to the woodshed and laid bare all of “Nick’s” purchases. She kicks a cardboard box of porn DVDs at Nick’s feet and points out the lurid, brutal, violent titles—Nick turns away from the images, only to see Go, in the driveway, being put into the back of a cop car.
Amy has engineered the contents of the woodshed not just to make Nick look like a greedy spendthrift, but a man with violent fantasies of harming women. Nick feels this twist of events—the cop’s discovery of the loot inside the shed—may be too big for him to worm his way out of.
Themes
An hour later, Nick and Tanner are at the police station, heading into a conference room with Boney and Gilpin. Boney confronts Nick and Tanner with the fact that Nick’s fingerprints are all over every piece of evidence in the woodshed—including the violent pornography. Nick realizes that Amy must have brought the items into their bedroom and had him touch them while he slept his signature deep sleep. As a final coup de grace, Boney sets Amy’s diary down in front of Nick. Though Nick insists Amy never kept a diary, Boney claims the book contains seven years of entries. Nick knows that something very bad is about to happen.
With every new revelation, Nick realizes more and more about how twisted his wife truly is—and how far she has gone to punish him. Nick didn’t know his wife at all—he wasn’t paying attention to just how angry she was growing, and ignored the warning signs about how desperate Amy is, and always has been, for control over those around her.
Themes
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