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
As Boney begins going through the diary with Nick, he begins to realize that the things contained within its pages are going to “ruin” him. The diary contains allegations that Nick poisoned Amy with antifreeze, pushed her around, and committed sexual acts which bordered on rape. When Boney points out the diary’s final lines—“This man might kill me”—Nick says snidely that it’s a “convenient” note for Amy to end on. Tanner hushes Nick and asks the detectives where the diary was found. When they tell him they found it at Bill’s, Nick asks if they received an “anonymous tip” pointing them to the house. The cops don’t say anything. Nick tells Boney and Gilpin they were supposed to find the diary, and Tanner at last lets loose with the fact that Amy is trying to frame Nick for murder.
Nick knows the diary is all a fiction—and a twisted one at that, designed to bring him down and make him look like a heartless killer. Even though Nick is aware that Amy is orchestrating everything, he is unable to get the detectives to see this. Amy has told her story so well that Nick doesn’t seem to stand a chance of poking holes in it or rendering it questionable.
Themes
Boney points out that it would have taken six months or a year for Amy to set all this up—to do so, she’d have to be “crazy.” Nick insists that Amy’s “sense of justice” is such that she would have committed to this rather than just divorced him—she’d want him to suffer. Tanner backs Nick up, but every time the two of them offer the detectives evidence of Amy’s destruction—Hilary Handy and Tommy O’Hara, the labyrinth clues—the cops find a way to bend the narrative towards Amy’s innocence. Even when Nick and Tanner produce the Punch and Judy puppets, Boney points out that Judy is missing her handle—an item as heavy and solid as a club. Nick knows that Boney and Gilpin will never see him as anything other than a killer.
Even though Tanner and Nick do their best to present the cops with the truth, it is so unimaginable to the cops that they refute it outright. Nick and Tanner are spinning a good story—but Amy is one step ahead of them, and by positioning herself as the victim, she has secured the advantage.
Themes
