Gone Girl Character Analysis

Social stigmas and stereotypes are built up through the many forms of media outlet and depict a generalization of certain people. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl tears down many of these stigmas and stereotypes through her unique and dynamic characters. The main character of the novel, Amy Sullivan highlights deviancy through her dynamic actions with her split personality of the cool girl façade and her genuine vengeful character.

Amy is deviant even in her cool girl guise at the beginning of the novel. While Amy’s “performance” of cool girl was made for the public to sympathize with, cool girl contained some aspects that were deviant (Petersen, par.9). In the words of Stephanie Orman (masters student in gender and cultural studies at the Simmons

For a while, cool girl was actually Amy and was deviant to a degree. She used cool girl to grab the attention of Nick and get married. While Nick used a similar tactic to entertain Amy, she expected them to never break character. Inevitably they did and Amy “ultimately breaks” (Osborne, par.10). She stopped being cool girl for many self-expressed reasons: "I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my independent Young Feminist card. I don’t care. I balance his checkbook, I trim his hair. I’ve gotten so retro, at one point I will probably use the word pocketbook, shuffling out the door in my swingy tweed coat, my lips painted red, on the way to the beauty parlor" (Flynn 38)! In the passage, she expresses her dissatisfaction with the lifestyle she has driven herself into along with the help of Nick. Her boredom with this lifestyle and personality is apparent through her narrative in which she describes her tendency to change personality as “the way some women change fashion” (Flynn 222). Her primary nature is quite ferocious and strays from the nature of the typical American wife. Amy’s main personality can be described as a “chillingly monstrous female figure” and a “cunning villain” who commits many unforgivable acts (Orman 7, 9). These unforgivable acts help describe her many deviant character

Most married women are perceived to be the caretaker in any relationship, but Amy is far from it in many parts of Gone Girl. Amy’s hateful and vengeful character surfaces when she was only fifteen; she framed Hilary Handy, one of her high school friends, for being crazy in order to teach her a lesson. Hilary’s only transgressions towards Amy were her slightly better grades and the attraction of a boy. In return for these transgressions, Amy played as God and saw that ruining her life was the appropriate punishment. Her contempt of these minor transgressions goes so far that she breaks her own ribs. Amy also framed one of her previous boyfriends, Tommy O’Hara, for rape just because he cheated on her and for his other minor imperfections. In order to frame Tommy, she gave herself multiple abrasions, not something a typical American woman would do. Additionally, she made sure that he knew her plan and his wrongdoings by tearing into his psyche with an untraceable