Gone Girl Analysis

The novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is primarily about how perceptions affect relationships, marriage, and the disastrous consequences of those perceptions in various ways. Gone Girl is set up so that the reader is getting the current story from the male main character Nick Dunne, while simultaneously seeing glimpses into the past according to the female main character Amy Elliott nee Dunne. This alternating view helps the reader see the differences between the male and female characters attitudes and behaviors over time. Although somewhat jarring in a novel, this approach to story telling was much more effective when viewed through the movie version. While presumably, a novel written by a woman with a female main character would paint women

The main characters of Gone Girl, Nick and Amy Dunne, meet they choose their personas based on what they think the other will find attractive. To create these personas, both characters used what they observed in their own lives, the lives of others and in popular culture. Amy Dunne chooses to be the mythical “Cool Girl” who is described as a “hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes” and “never gets angry” (Flynn 222). Amy feels that this ideal woman is non-existent and that “they’re [women are] pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be” (Flynn 222-23). While to an extent this is what many people do, glossing over their inner-self Amy adopts the “Cool Girl” and completely replaces who she really

In our culture, there is a persistent myth that women often choose to falsely report rape and Gone Girl does nothing but confirm this idea. Flynn’s character, Amy Dunne falsely reports or claims rape by not one man but three, an ex-boyfriend, her husband, and another ex-boyfriend turned captor. By using false rape accusations Amy Dunne manipulates the legal system and the men in question into behaving in whatever way she wanted. By creating a female character that falsely reports rape Flynn confirms the idea that this is a common occurrence. The “fragile” treatment that Dunne receives after her rape and assumed miscarriage is consistent with the idea certain types of women (homemakers and mothers) are treated “sympathetically by the media” because they are viewed as untouchable (or as virgins) as discussed by Milestone and Meyer (110).

Within the novel, the consumption of media plays a large part in how successful Amy Dunne’s plot to frame her husband is. When women disappear or are killed the first conclusion is always that their male partner had something to do with it. As Gone Girl unfolds, the police and media run with this idea, and every move Nick Dunne makes is torn apart making him appear