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Summary
Nick Dunne, Thirty Days After the Return
In Nick’s opinion, Amy believes she is in control but is mistaken. He’s working with Boney and Go to make the case that Amy framed him and killed Desi. Boney regrets suspecting Nick and is frustrated by their inability to prove Amy framed him, but Amy is too clever at covering her tracks to have let anything slip through. Go suggests various ways to expose Amy, but they’re all shot down by Boney, who understands the crime media cycle better. Nick finds himself forgetting he hates Amy sometimes, as he tries to play the game of being a good enough husband until he can bring her down.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Eight Weeks After the Return
Amy feels totally secure. Even though Nick has found and disposed of the jar that contains one of her pieces of planted “insurance” evidence (vomit containing antifreeze, which she wrote that she suspected he fed her), it doesn’t shake her good mood. She’s planning to publish a book, called Amazing, which will give the gory details of her story. She knows Nick will have to continue to bow to her needs, going on tour with her and smiling nicely.
Nick Dunne, Nine Weeks After the Return
Nick discovers Amy's frozen vomit sample—planted to make it look like he poisoned her—and throws it away. However, when she doesn’t react, he knows something’s very wrong. His meetings with Boney and Go to try and expose her start to feel fruitless. When his father dies, he goes to Amy for comfort and joins her in their bed that night, letting her soothe him. He begins writing his own book about their marriage, trying to reclaim control of his story in the way that Amy wants to with Amazing.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Ten Weeks After the Return
Amy’s astute enough to realize that Nick is only pretending to be happy while she hears him writing late at night. She guesses he’s writing something damaging, but this new, sharper Nick has changed the password to his laptop. Amy knows she must take action to regain control, as it seems that Nick is planning to challenge her authority over their story.
Nick Dunne, Twenty Weeks After the Return
Nick completes his manuscript, Psycho Bitch, and confronts Amy with it. She’s unbothered, however, and shows him a positive pregnancy test. Amy demands Nick destroy his manuscript in front of her, and she also forces him to sign an affidavit stating that even if he once suspected her, he doesn’t now. Nick realizes he has been outplayed. He wants to defend his child from Amy’s poison, and so he agrees to her terms. He tells Go and Boney the search is over, and accepts that he and Amy will be battling forever.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Ten Months, Two Weeks, Six Days After the Return
Amy states that after all her adventures, she’s learned that unconditional love is a bad idea. Conditional love is far better, as it forces one to be disciplined, to be their best self for their partner. Her baby is due on her sixth wedding anniversary with Nick, and she feels she has nearly finished fixing him. However, Nick did let it slip that he pitied her, which unsettles her deeply. She adds one final sentence, just to have “the last word,” and the novel ends.
Analysis
Nick’s relationship with Go is perhaps the biggest casualty of Amy’s schemes, besides the deceased Desi Collings. Go has been at Nick’s side throughout his battles with Amy’s plot to have him killed. When Amy returns and manipulates him into being a happy husband for the media, Go’s and Nick’s relationship deteriorates significantly due to his decision to stay with his wife. Go has always been Nick's confidante and his most staunch supporter. She’s impotently furious at Amy for everything she’s done, but becomes just as frustrated and disillusioned by Nick’s choice to remain with her. She sees Nick's decision to stay with Amy as a betrayal of their bond as twins, and as surrendering to Amy's manipulative tactics. This growing distance has the dual effect of entrapping Nick further, and permanently alienating him from his closest former ally.
It's arguable that Amy's machinations actually establish more traditionally desirable trust structures within her marriage than she and Nick had before. Previous to the events of the novel, Go and Nick had been so close that other people often joked about incest when their names came up. Nick confided in Go about his relationship troubles, instead of discussing them with Amy. He didn’t challenge Go’s dislike of her, and never made Amy feel like a priority when Go was around. By orchestrating events that leave Nick with no choice but to depend on her, Amy disrupts this troublesome enmeshment. Instead of relying on Go, Nick has to communicate with his wife directly. This forced reliance ironically increases their unity as a couple. Even though he loathes her, Nick finds himself closer to Amy than to Go.
One of the key through-lines of Gone Girl is the idea that marriage is paradoxical: it’s meant to make one being out of two fundamentally separate individuals. Nick and Amy have very different views of and experiences with marriage, and those differences are a major source of conflict in their relationship. Nick initially views marriage as a partnership based on mutual love and support. He enters into the relationship with Amy with genuine excitement and adoration, hoping to build a life together based on honesty and shared experiences. However, over time, he grows disillusioned as the realities of adult life leach away the ease and happiness of their marriage. He realizes that his perceptions of Amy were rooted in a fantasy, one that requires constant performances of perfection from both spouses. Although he knows this, as he admits to himself at the end, he also craves it. Amy makes him into a better version of himself, and Nick believes that any other woman would pale in comparison. Go tells him that he’s addicted to Amy, and that she suspects the reason he doesn’t leave her is because he doesn’t want to. It’s more complex than this, of course, but Go’s statement is broadly correct. Nick has become so enmeshed in Amy that in a sense their marriage is a successful one.
Amy, on the other hand, has always seen marriage as a strategic game where control and image are paramount. This seems contradictory at first, as her parents have a seemingly very happy, smooth partnership. However, while they are happy with each other, Amy’s childhood is less than ideal as the result of all of that honesty and “cherishing each other.” Her parents have no time for anyone but each other, and they give far more affection and attention to “Amazing Amy,” the fictional daughter they create, than to their real daughter. Amy doesn’t want a life like this, and so she determines that she will always come first to her partner by being everything they could ever want. This facade is part of her broader strategy, which sees marriage as a measure of success and as a way of winning. Amy's view of marriage is transactional and conditional, based on her ability to maintain power and control over Nick. She believes, as she says at the end, that unconditional love is a myth. She goes on to explain that conditional love, a love which requires one’s partner to always try to improve and impress, is far more realistic and desirable, foreshadowing what her and Nick’s relationship might look like going forward—a daunting or hopeful proposition, depending on your point of view.
