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Summary
Nick Dunne, Seven Days Gone (2)
When Nick opens the woodshed door, he discovers it’s filled with incriminating expensive items purchased with his credit cards. He’s looking at $200,000 worth of fraudulently purchased merchandise, which Amy has hidden in one of the locations he used to take Andie for their trysts. He calls Go out to see it, and they look for the clue they know Amy has left. They find it in a box with Punch and Judy puppets inside. After some wrangling, they figure out what the puppets symbolize. Go and Nick, aghast, realize that Amy intends Nick to get the death penalty for her murder. If they were in New York, it wouldn’t be possible. In Missouri, however, it definitely is.
Amy Elliott Dunne, The Day Of
Amy tells the reader that she saw Nick and Andie kissing, which humiliated her. After this, she decided to frame Nick to punish him and reclaim her narrative. After she leaves Carthage, she goes to a gas station bathroom and hacks off her hair, dying it brown to make herself uglier. She gleefully describes writing the fake diary entries that she knew would sway the public to her side, and says she feels no regret for what she’s done to Nick and her family.
Nick Dunne, Seven Days Gone
Nick is frozen with shock, and calls his lawyer. After Nick tells him he thinks Amy is framing him, Tanner immediately gets on a plane to Missouri. Andie comes over unannounced to Nick’s house and he furiously yanks her inside. She says she’s falling apart, and Nick, frustrated, tells her it’s time they ended things. She doesn’t take this well, retaliating with a list of all of Nick’s failings and a rebuttal of his calm, moral-high-ground breakup speech. She leaves, weeping and angrily pushing past Nick as he tries to stop her.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Five Days Gone
Amy is hiding in the Ozarks, monitoring the investigation from the many channels she’s set up to supervise Nick’s downfall. She loves the media coverage, and intervenes wherever she can to make sure Nick gets the maximum possible punishment. She describes budgeting her money so she can last long enough to watch Nick get the death sentence. She’s then going to kill herself, providing the final piece of evidence that will condemn Nick. She thinks angrily about Nick’s sex life with Andie, which only strengthens her resolve.
Nick Dunne, Eight Days Gone
Nick leaves voicemail after voicemail for Andie, who ignores him. Detective Boney visits Nick, pretending to be friendly and then telling him Amy’s purse was found with his fingerprints. Boney leaves and Tanner Bolt arrives, and Nick and Go go into detail about Amy’s real personality and how she framed him. Nick tells Tanner about the treasure hunt and Amy’s clever clues, and Go chimes in in support. After looking at the final clue, Tanner realises that there must be more evidence of Nick’s “guilt” hidden at Bill’s house.
Amy Elliott Dunne, Seven Days Gone
Amy sees her own pregnancy on the news, and tells the reader that she added that detail because she knew it would get her maximum news coverage. She explains how she manipulated Noelle to get her urine, so that she could take it to the doctor’s office and fake being pregnant. Back in the present, Amy meets Greta, one of the many single women who show up at the cheap rental cabin place she’s staying at. She introduces herself to Greta as “Nancy.” Greta invites her over and they watch coverage of Amy’s case on Ellen Abbott.
Nick Dunne, Eight Days Gone
Nick, Tanner, and Go search Bill's house for evidence but find nothing. Tanner tries to impress upon Nick that it’s crucial they manage public perception of the events, as Amy’s plan could also implicate Go. Tanner suggests they speak to Andie, and pushes Nick for an alibi for the morning Amy disappeared. Nick admits he was sitting in a garage reading back copies of the magazine he used to write for. Marybeth and Rand come to the house and confront Nick about Amy, pressing him to admit that he killed her. Nick contacts Tommy O’Hara, a man who had been repeatedly calling the info line about Amy. He tells Nick that Amy set him up too, falsely accusing him of rape and ruining his life.
Analysis
In this section of Gone Girl, media perception and the necessity of playing a part take center stage. It’s not just Amy who has to put on a façade; Nick is forced to play the role of the appropriately grieving husband who definitely didn’t kill his wife. Nick's lawyer, Tanner Bolt, feels it’s his job to emphasize the importance of managing public opinion to Nick. Nick believes that people in general like him, and that his innocence in this situation will eventually come to light. His lawyer disagrees. Tanner is known for rehabilitating the reputations of men accused of killing their wives. It makes hiring him a double-edge sword—it’s almost an admission of guilt on Nick’s part—but it also means that Nick will get the best help in crafting how his story gets told.
Tanner advises Nick to pay very close attention to his public image and behavior, explaining that in cases like this one the court of public opinion often matters more than people think. When Tanner arrives in Missouri and immediately begins coaching Nick on handling the media, Nick feels resentful and foolish. However, Tanner practices what he preaches, making sure to dress and act in a way that will maximize his appeal wherever he goes. His consistent appropriateness is just as much of a façade as Nick’s nice-guy persona, but seeing how well he executes it encourages Nick to try and improve. Tanner's appearance and demeanor project confidence and control to the media, and more than anything else, Nick wants to re-establish control.
Tanner’s efforts to help him seem more human seem to work during the candlelight vigil in the previous section, where Nick tries his best to maintain his composure and deliver a heartfelt speech. It seems to be going well initially, and Nick begins to hope that he’s managed to make people like him again. However, the vigil backfires when Noelle interrupts, turning the crowd against him. After finding the contents of the woodshed, Nick undergoes rigorous media training to present himself as a sympathetic and wronged husband rather than a suspect. This training includes rehearsing statements, controlling facial expressions, and modulating his voice to make himself seem sincere and innocent. It’s ironic that Nick needs these things, as it is clear by this point that he has not actually killed his wife, but his previous attempts at seeming likeable have only made him seem more suspicious and sinister to the public.
Part of the reason Nick seems so unlikable is because the media storm around Amy portrays him as a scheming gold-digger. Finances and class dynamics play a significant role in this section for both Dunnes, especially for Amy in her Ozarks cabin. Amy has only the money she’s managed to squirrel away to live on, and she has to conceal her upper-class accent and demeanor in order to hide her identity. The awkward friendship she strikes up with Greta, a single, working-class woman living in a cheap rental cabin, sheds light on the disparities between Amy’s privileged background and Greta’s own upbringing. Amy, who has always lived a life where money was easily available, now has to pretend to come from a poorer background. She mentions in this section that many of the women she sees at the rental cabins look as though they have recently fled abusive relationships. It’s ironic that Amy, in constructing her web of lies, is pretending to have been abused while surrounded by women who have actually undergone that trauma. Even her ability to purchase a beater car with cash and set up a hideout in the Ozarks reflects her access to resources that many women in Greta’s situation would not have.
Amy, like Nick, cannot and does not acknowledge her privilege, and treats everyone around her as if they aren’t smart enough to understand her schemes. Rather than feeling sympathetic to the women around her, she just feels vindicated in her treatment of Nick and her disdain for humanity in general. She even makes a cruel joke about choosing a new name, as she explains to the reader when she introduces herself to Greta. She can’t use her real name, and so she tells Greta that her name is “Nancy.” Nancy is a character in the Dickens novel Oliver Twist, a prostitute with a kind heart who’s unfailingly loyal to her abusive boyfriend Bill Sykes until he beats her to death with a club. In Amy’s narration, she makes a snide allusion to the musical version of Oliver Twist, where Nancy sings a pathetically moving song about loyalty to Bill even though she’s been “used so ill” by him. This reference to homicide by beating is also a reference to Amy’s many layers of clever scheming. The Punch and Judy puppets Nick and Go find are also references to a story about a man who beats his wife to death with a club. Amy has planted the club-like handle of the Judy puppet to be found as the “murder weapon” Nick used to kill her. She’s left the puppets in the woodshed as a way of gloating about her cleverness to Nick, as well as yet another way of framing him. By calling herself “Nancy,” she’s making another sly reference to her triumph over Nick, who she believes will go down in history for the same crimes as Bill Sykes and Punch.
