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1. Nick Dunne, The Day Of (1)
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
Amy writes in her diary that she is “embarrassed” by how happy she is—she has met a “boy.” Amy writes that she’s going to “set the scene” and tell the story of how she’s met her new “funny, cool-ass guy.” Amy was invited to a writers’ party in Brooklyn by one of her friends. Amy, the “child of writers,” considers herself a writer, too, though she admits that all she really writes are personality quizzes for a women’s magazine. Amy reveals that she is also “the inspiration for a beloved children’s-book series” known throughout the country—Amazing Amy.
The introduction of Amy’s diary entries—which date back to 2005 and chart the early days of Nick and Amy’s courtship—offer an alternative point of view. Flynn is actively destabilizing the narrative in an attempt to mirror the forces which have destabilized her main characters’ marriage over the years. The diary also functions, from quite early on, as Amy’s bald attempt to reclaim the narrative of her life—which has largely been fodder for a series of books over which she had no control.
Themes
The party is raucous and decadent, everyone there “still glutted and sugar-pissed from the holidays,” and Amy gets separated from her friends. A man approaches Amy, and she finds him cocky and yet sexy. As she continues talking to him she is annoyed by how good-looking he is, like a “rich-boy villain in an ‘80s teen movie.” Amy learns that the guy’s name is Nick. He is goofy and casual and speaks lovingly of his Missouri roots. They leave the party together and walk towards Amy’s apartment; a few blocks from her door, they pass the local bakery as it’s receiving a delivery of powdered sugar and are caught in the “storm.” Nick brushes flurries of sugar from Amy’s lips before he kisses her.
Nick and Amy’s first meeting is the stuff of fairytales—he sweeps her off her feet at a party and kisses her in a sugar storm. The sugar storm represents the sweet, dreamlike haze of first love—but whether things were truly as saccharine and perfect as they appeared to be will later be reexamined.
Themes
