From Getting Lost To Being Awakening:on Nick's Ethical Choices In Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn is a contemporary American writer.Up to now,she has written three novels,among which Gone Girl is her latest and most representative work.Gone Girl was published in 2012 and topped the Bestseller Fiction Chart of the New York Times for eight consecutive weeks.Later in 2014,it was adapted for the big screen.Gone Girl is centered around the wife Amy's mysterious missing on the 5^th wedding anniversary.Seemingly,Nick and Amy are a happily married couple,but as the investigation goes on,all clues and evidence suggest that Nick is the lead suspect of murdering his wife.The truth is that the whole missing case is a fraud elaborately orchestrated by Amy to frame Nick in revenge for his infidelity.To date,domestic and foreign researches on Gone Girl are rather limited and most of the researches are focused on the wife Amy.Besides,few researches have tried associating the main characters'words and actions with the ethical situation in the novel.This thesis intends to shift the focus to the husband Nick on the basis of Ethical Literary Criticism,which will hopefully provide a new perspective for readers to approach the ethical theme of the novel.In Gone Girl,due to the chaos in his ethical situation,Nick makes,in total,three ethical choices which run through the whole novel and serve as the important clues moving the plot forward and reflecting Flynn's ethical values.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the author Gillian Flynn,Gone Girl,the current research status as well as the theoretical framework and layout of the thesis.The next three chapters are Nick's three ethical choices which also correspond to the timeline of the novel's plot.In the first ethical choice,Nick chooses infidelity over fidelity when he begins his affair with his lover.Two underlying causes for this choice are his estrangement from his wife and the temptation of his lover.In the second ethical choice,Nick chooses dishonesty over honesty.On the one hand,he tries to deceive himself into believing that his affair is forgivable and he is a dutiful brother and son;on the other hand,he deliberately deceives the public for fear of imprisonment.In the third ethical choice,Nick finally comes to his senses and becomes aware of his responsibility for being a coward in confrontation and the trigger of his wife's crime.He resolutely assumes his responsibility of guarding against the crime-prone Amy and protecting their unborn child.The fifth chapter summarizes Nick's growth journey from getting lost in the ethical chaos to awakening to his responsibilities.It also reveals the writer's use of Nick's choices to demonstrate her ethical values of fidelity,honesty and responsibility,which is also the realization of moral instructions of Gone Girl.