Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl: A Novel. New York:
Crown, 2012. Print
Gone Girl is a modern aged book written about a couple’s rocky marriage. Unlike most stories, this book is written switching from each side of the story, between Nick and Amy. There are many twists and turns as Nick’s wife turns up missing and the evidence all starts to point at Nick. As the story unfolds, Amy reveals that her plan was to set him up all along. I set up my controlling values for this book as this:
The purpose of the controlling value is to follow marriage tradition and work through any problems through “good times and bad times, in sickness and in health, etc.” The couple both admit that they knew the honeymoon phase would pass. Nick says in the beginning of the book, ““I suppose the questions stormcloud over every marriage. What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?” (p.3) The context of this controlling value leads me to believe that if they break the marriage tradition, they become failures. Both of their parents are happily married and have been for many years. The purpose of the opposing controlling value is if they don’t follow through with their marriage, they will both have freedom. They will be able to “breathe” and be happy again.The context of this opposing controlling value is blindly following through with this marriage will cause them to live a very unhealthy, unhappy life.
Gone Girl is a modern aged book written about a couple’s rocky marriage. Unlike most stories, this book is written switching from each side of the story, between Nick and Amy. There are many twists and turns as Nick’s wife turns up missing and the evidence all starts to point at Nick. As the story unfolds, Amy reveals that her plan was to set him up all along. I set up my controlling values for this book as this:
The purpose of the controlling value is to follow marriage tradition and work through any problems through “good times and bad times, in sickness and in health, etc.” The couple both admit that they knew the honeymoon phase would pass. Nick says in the beginning of the book, ““I suppose the questions stormcloud over every marriage. What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?” (p.3) The context of this controlling value leads me to believe that if they break the marriage tradition, they become failures. Both of their parents are happily married and have been for many years. The purpose of the opposing controlling value is if they don’t follow through with their marriage, they will both have freedom. They will be able to “breathe” and be happy again.The context of this opposing controlling value is blindly following through with this marriage will cause them to live a very unhealthy, unhappy life.
Distinguishing character
This book, for me, was really easy for me to find the
distinguishing character traits in Amy and I read what she writes and can
picture her feeling like “there’s something wrong here.”
“I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I’m obviously trying to be charming, then I try to be more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli; dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me.” (p.11) Amy knows deep down inside that she is tired of always pretending to be someone she’s not. She cannot always be “Amazing Amy” that her parents may have set up their expectations for her to live up to. I also think that this method was easiest for me to write about in my blogs. |
Rhetoric of narrators
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Qualitative Progressive formA quantity is obvious and measurable; qualities are inferred and felt, and thus evoke moods. A given mood, once it is present, allows us to enter another mood, or state of mind, that might follow. A commonplace literary trope that employs qualitative progression is "foreshadowing." |
semic codeDefines characters, objects, and places through repetitively grouping a number of signifiers ("semes": words and phrases) around a proper name. Because this code defines characters, objects. and places, the semic code sets up relationships of power that often reinforce cultural codes. |
I picked qualitative progressive form because Gone Girl really evoked many different
mood and emotions as I was reading it. Nick would really make you feel his happiness when he’s not home
and at The Bar with his sister Margo. At the same time, you could really feel how gloomy he felt when he
was home and how uneasy his living situation was with Amy. (Example.)
By doing this, it is pretty easy to foreshadow how the events will unfold in the book. It becomes pretty obvious that something bad is going to happen. I felt like I was standing in a room with people who had masks on with fake smiles and there’s no way to tell what the person behind the mask is really feeling. For me, masks=murderers, which brings a negative and scary vibe into it. |
Semic code was easy for me to discover in Gone Girl as soon as Amy started to write in her diary about "dancing monkeys."
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