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
One afternoon, after going out for groceries, Nick comes home to find Tanner, Boney, and Gilpin in the living room. On the coffee table is a plastic evidence bag, containing the Judy puppet’s missing handle. Boney says they found it in the river behind the house early on in the investigation but didn’t think anything of it—recent tests, however, have found traces of Amy’s blood on it. Boney officially places Nick under arrest for the murder of his wife.
As Nick is arrested for Amy’s murder, he realizes that there was a much more sinister component to the Punch and Judy puppets all along—they are literally designed to be the instruments of his demise. Amy has written the story of her murder, and Nick is a helpless character within it.
Themes
