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Summary
Part Three: Boy Gets Girl Back (Or Vice Versa)
Nick Dunne, Forty Days Gone
Nick feels helpless and demoralized as he waits for his murder trial to begin. However, to his surprise, Amy suddenly returns home, covered in blood and wearing a thin pink dress. Sobbing, she throws herself into his arms in front of the news vans and photographers camped out in near his house. Nick embraces Amy for the cameras but mutters a curse in her ear as he pulls her inside. Amy tells Nick that Desi kidnapped her and Nick, for a moment, wants to believe her. He asks her where Desi is, but she just shakes her head and smiles.
Amy Elliott Dunne, The Night of the Return
Amy clinically recounts the evidence she’s planted to make it seem as though Desi violently raped her, and says that she killed him trying to escape his clutches. The doctors all agree she is a textbook case of sexual assault, and the police take her to the station to interview her. Boney interviews her carefully, but Amy has a response for every question she’s asked. When Boney tells her that a lot of her story seems too coincidental to be true, Amy retorts that it sounds like Boney is trying to cover up police incompetence.
Nick Dunne, The Night of the Return
When Nick gets to the police station, everyone has gathered there to celebrate Amy’s return. Most people seem relieved, although some are dubious about the details of the story. Jacqueline Collings arrives and tells the reporters that Amy murdered her son. She’s ushered away, and Rand and Marybeth apologize to Nick for turning on him. Amy is released to go home, and Nick immediately starts to probe her about what happened, struggling to control his rage and sense of injustice. Amy makes him undress and stand in the shower before she tells him the whole story. She also tells him she’ll do worse to him if he leaves her. Nick tells Tanner what she said, and Tanner, at a loss, tells him to play nice until they can get more evidence.
Amy Elliott Dunne, The Night of the Return
Amy confronts Nick after overhearing his phone call with Tanner, repeating the lawyer’s words back to him.
Amy warns Nick he’d be nothing without her and looks pleased when he reacts violently. When she tells him that she is “the b*tch who made him a man,” he can’t hold back his fury and puts his hands around her neck.
Nick Dunne, The Night of the Return
Nick stands in front of Amy with her pulse beating under his fingers, weeping. She waits patiently. As she does, he realizes that she’s right; she has ruined him for other women. He’s also brought out the absolute worst in her, and it’s his fault she’s been unleashed on the world. The only thing he can do, he resolves, is “not kill her but stop her. Put her in one of her boxes.”
Amy Elliott Dunne, Five Days After the Return
After this confrontation Amy considers her options and decides she needs to be more careful with Nick than she’d initially thought. In order to keep him at heel and preserve her story, she plans a final precaution that she knows will keep him pacified. Her parents have left Carthage to go and write the next Amazing Amy book, and she and Nick are playing house placidly for the time being. She thinks she can make Nick love her again, given time.
Analysis
When Amy gives her statement to the police about killing Desi, the author places her interview transcript on the page as if it’s being recorded verbatim. This gives an extra ring of truth to a story the reader already knows is false, demonstrating Amy’s skill at manipulation. During the interview, Amy portrays Desi as a possessive, abusive ex-lover who kidnapped and raped her. She uses her ragged physical state to excuse any gaps or holes in the story, framing herself as a victim who heroically—but barely—escaped.
The verbatim presentation of the text of the interview draws the reader into the room where Amy is being questioned. Every word, pause, and inflection is part of her performance of victimhood and bravery. This method of storytelling allows readers to see how believable a story like Amy’s could be, especially given the extraordinary circumstances. The verbatim interview also makes the reader painfully aware of Nick’s frustration and helplessness. Despite knowing the truth, he can only watch as Amy steers the investigation in her favor. As she speaks, her lies become facts, as she is the only person who can speak to what actually happened.
Amy's return home in the last section of Gone Girl is not a failure of her revenge plot: it’s a triumphant success. After meticulously framing Nick for her murder, Amy dramatically reappears. She doesn’t have to commit suicide as she originally planned. Instead, she transforms from victim to avenger. In short, she seizes control of the story of her life, and retakes control of Nick’s along with it. She drastically shifts the power dynamic between her and Nick, solidifying her dominance forever. Part of the reason she was so frustrated at the outset of the novel was that she felt she had lost the upper hand in their relationship. Their move to Carthage and Nick’s affair gave him a semblance of control over their marriage, and because of this he took Amy utterly for granted. Her reappearance not only absolves Nick from a legal standpoint, but also makes it almost impossible for him to leave her. Rather than punishing him with death for being a bad husband, Amy gives him a life sentence, a marriage full of paranoia and misery.
Amy’s able to rewrite the story of the events of her disappearance exactly as she wants to, because she’s murdered the only person who could contradict her. In a way, she’s writing her own Amazing Amy novel by doing this. Her parents used her failures and indiscretions as inspiration for their stories; when Amy did something wrong, “Amazing Amy” would do it right, and make them rich in the process. Amy is able to take the facts of her time in the Ozarks and in Missouri with Nick and rewrite them, making “Actual Amy” the hero of the story. She recomposes history with herself as the wronged and resilient wife, and the men in her life as the violent and unfaithful abusers. Perhaps because Amy was so associated with the morally upright “Amazing Amy” character, the public absolutely eats up this narrative. Ironically, after the “kidnapping” her parents are able to pay Nick and Amy back the money they borrowed, because Amy’s disappearance has rekindled interest in the Amazing Amy novels. Amy’s deceptions come full circle, making her parents rich again and restoring the public perception of her marriage and her personality.
In private, the power dynamics between Amy and Nick become even more skewed and convoluted. Amy's knowledge of everything Nick has done is a ticking bomb waiting to explode, but it’s not enough for her. She impregnates herself using Nick’s sperm from the fertility clinic he visited when they briefly tried to have a baby before in order to get even more assurance that Nick won’t disrupt the story she is telling. Nick, painfully aware of Amy's capability for deceit and for ruthlessness, finds himself trapped in a marriage where everything he does has to align with Amy’s wants. The pregnancy binds Nick to her permanently, as Amy knew it would, and it appeals strongly to Nick's own guilt and shame about his abusive, chronically ill father. She threatens to turn the child against him if he leaves, and having seen how effectively she can manipulate others, he’s sure she can do it. Nick also comes full circle; he’s in a relationship with his dream woman, the ultimate “Cool Girl,” and he’s utterly miserable.
