The Dual Writing Style In Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl

This matter of the "girl back home" warrants further study. This is the girl whom Daisy and Tom ask about, and the subject of whom Nick clearly (and

When Gatsby reveals to about his relationship with Daisy, Nick’s relationship with Gatsby takes a full u-turn as it rapidly advances their association from simple acquaintances to close friends. Nick’s outlook of Gatsby undergoes a similar transformation. When Nick learns of the previous relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, Gatsby’s actions make sense to Nick. The mansion, the extravagant parties, and the green light were all in the efforts for making Daisy notice him. Gatsby lives his life for the past life that he lived. He spends his life seeking the attention of his love, Daisy, and as Nick explains, “He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…” (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby sought out the American dream in order to win over the love of Daisy which creates a different perception of himself to Nick. Nick, now knowing Gatsby’s intentions worries about Gatsby’s possible rejection, and then warns him that, “[he] wouldn’t ask too much of her, you can’t repeat the past.” (Fitzgerald 110) But Gatsby, blinded by love, strives to win Nick’s married cousin’s heart. Nick perceives Gatsby as a man dwelling on the past

Daisy’s sudden, simple respect for the truth is startling to the reader because Nick’s perceptions of her throughout the novel are so very limited to her superficial manner … her stubborn honesty … is a logical outgrowth of her inner struggle to resolve conflicting needs. It is a brief, futile attempt to declare emotional independence (Fryer 54).

Amy enters relationships with unrealistic expectations, and to keep up the appearance of these standards, she cons her friends, boyfriends, and husband into appearing abusive or insane (Flynn 386). Amy’s addictions to control and playing the role of the victim allow her to continue manipulating the truth. She graduates from claiming she was stalked, to insisting she was raped, until finally pretending she was murdered by her husband, Nick (Flynn 387). Unlike with the obsessions of Gatsby and Dick, Amy’s obsession stems not only from her failure to keep of the façade of a perfect relationship, but also her inner need to be seen as innocent. All three characters are blinded by their compulsions to hide the truths of their lives and put on a front of perfection. The impossibility to give up perfection leads to the end of rationality and an unyielding determination to uphold the façade. A dreamer is bound to be disappointed, but will continue to manipulate his or her reality, hoping in vain that excessiveness will allow the dreamer to overcome their failures. Trying to manipulate reality for a veneer of perfection leads to the development of an addiction to the perfection, causing indulgences and irrational decisions that continue to destroy the lives of the

To the casual reader, the writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem cold and void of emotion. Her storylines are like a misty fog in the dead of winter, enveloping the reader with a harsh even violent atmosphere. Her short stories regularly end in traumatic, freak deaths or, at the very least, a character's emotional destruction. An analysis of “Greenleaf,” “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” or “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” will leave the reader feeling empty. The imagination of the reader is not engaged on any level. There is an under current of anti-religion which is intensified by cruelty. O’Connor’s writing is filled with symbolism which is camouflaged by her writing style. Although her writing style is not considered by experts as

Nick sees these two girls as goddesses, showing his feelings of lust over both in the eyes of the readers. Nick begins describing Jordan with imagery just as vivid as that of Daisy’s depiction. “The last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face”, Nick describes inviting a warm and sweet image to fill the mind, though this feeling did not last long (Fitz???). Following suit in his relationship with Daisy, Nick becomes blind to the reality of Jordan and her personality. With this narrational blindness and a single perspective, the audience continues to receive unreliable information, this time about all endeavors relating to, or about Jordan. Being blind and love-struck again, Nick not only continues to be unreliable as a narrator, he completely replaces Daisy. “With characteristic unawareness, Nick compromises with his feelings by using Jordan Baker as a surrogate Daisy” (Unreliable Narration in The Great Gatsby). This claim by Boyle defines the reason Nick continues to follow the pattern he took with Daisy and realize later that Jordan is not the woman he previously thought she was. Upon coming to this realization Nick ends his affairs with Jordan, leading to a new point in the pattern not shown in his one-sided

Both have gone to school and struggled with it but had different roles when home. Both characters start noticing something different with their public and private/home lifestyles. Amy has a challenge of being the house spokesperson for her mother and still attend school. Richard is different from Amy at home due to the fact that Richard has more of a kid's life compared to Amy's adult responsibilities. Richard has more of a family to surround himself at a table to have dinner and talk, but Amy does not talk about any other family in the story besides her mother and a husband at the beginning of the book.

Foreshadowing – “ And there was the living room, signs of a struggle. I already knew Amy wasn’t phoning back.”(31) This gives the book a fairly dark twist, suggestion that the wife might be dead, or murdered.

The author chose to alternate between the two girls’ perspectives because she wanted the reader to see how both these characters changed when forced to be around

The bright red fire truck sped through the streets filled with uniform, pale grey colored houses. The wheels skidded to a stop in front of a house that looked just like the others, as Beatty violently pulled the brake backwards. The men went tumbling backwards, as if the truck had just hit a brick wall in front of them.

The world that Nick recounts is full of idealizations. When Nick first encounters Jordan and Daisy, “They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house” (8). The women here sound like something out of a fairy tale. They come off as fantastical but are not as good of people as they may seem. Their false presentation brings up the lies behind everyone’s presentation. Gatsby, as well, is not what he presents himself as. He is said to be an “Oxford man” but only visited Oxford with Dan Cody. The façades are a part of society’s attempt to be something it is not and to present itself as something better than it is. The truth is that they are all, in their own ways, like Tom and Daisy

For Nick, Gatsby's lies, his affectation and his fraud are no matter; nor is his failure to win back Daisy; what matters is the supporting belief in the value of striving for a marvelous object, not its predictable disappearance and meaninglessness. In a significant shift in of the novel's final sentences, Nick unites Gatsby's effort with a general, if unspecified, national collective.

Flannery O’connor is one of the most shinning stars in American literature. Her distinct writing style makes her work recognizable and outstanding from other literature works. Many critics have commented on Flannery O’connor’s narrative voice. Louise Blackwell discovers Miss O’Connor often wrote according to southern tradition by using symbols in people’s daily life to convey the theme in a more profound way. From the perspective of the O’connor’s writing technique, Shirley Foster speaks highly of Miss O’connor’s works: O’connor’s skilled technique establishes the complicity between the readers and narrators. These two evaluations reveal the most important characteristics of Flannery O’connor’s works, directing readers to understand O’connor’s works much easier. Readers can understand the two critics’ comments by exploring the special narrative voices in Flannery O’connor’s well- known stories: “ Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find”.

Flynn breaks down the types of violence present throughout the novel: domestic, sexual and patriarchal (or male dominance). Like combining the grotesque and violence into a text, two of the subtopics of violence (patriarchal and domestic) happen at the same time, which Flynn clearly presents in Gone Girl. Prior to Amy’s disappearance, the factor that lead to domestic and patriarchal violence is the economic downfall in which Nick calls “The Missouri Grievance” (Flynn, 4) as he “Blame[s] the economy” (4) and lost his mother to cancer. As Amy transitioned from the “Cool Girl” (Flynn, 222) to the “standard girl,” (223) this also causes Nick to lose his perception of manhood based on Amy’s role as a wife. Furthermore, the marital conflict occurs without

Girls, young women, and mature mothers. Society has consistently given women strict guidelines, rules and principles on how to be an appropriate member of a man’s society. These rules are set at a young age and enforced thoroughly into adulthood. When not followed accordingly, women often times too many face reprimanding through means of verbal abuse, physical abuse, or social exile. In the midst of all these strict guidelines and social etiquette for girls, a social rebellion started among girls and women and gender roles were broken, however the social rebellion did not and does not affect all girls and women. For instance, in less socially developed places, young girls on the brink of womanhood are still strongly persuaded to be a man’s idea of a “woman”.