The Narrative Perspective Study of Gone Girl

閆紅麗

Abstract：Based on Genette's narrative perspective theory, the thesis studies the narrative perspective of Gone Girl written by Gillian Flynn.The thesis consists of four parts: The first part is the introduction of the writer, Gillian Flynn, and her work, Gone Girl. The second part mainly analyzes the research background of narrative perspective and the relationship between the person and perspective.The third part is the main body of the thesis, and it mainly focuses on three aspects: the specific application of internal focalization in Gone Girl;the narrative strategies of the writer in Gone Girl from the narrative perspective; and the unique narrative order of Gone Girl.

Key words: narrative perspective; narrator;internal focalization; narrative order

I. Introductio n

Gillian Flynn is an American writer. She was born in Missouri in 1971. Both of her parents are college professors. Because of the influence of her parents，Gillian Flynn has been reading books since she was a little child. She has published three novels: Sharp Objects, Dark Places and Gone Girl.Her first novel, Sharp Objects, was the winner of the two Dagger Awards and was shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Award, and for an Edgar. Her second,Dark Places, was published to great critical acclaim. And her latest novel, Gone Girl, was the bestseller in the New York Times.

Gone Girl became one of the most-talked-about novels of 2012, reaching No.1 on the New York Times' bestsellers list just six weeks after it was released in June. And the story is told by two separate narrators. There are two main characters in the story: Nick Dunne, and his wife, Amy Elliott.The story is told from two perspective views: Nick and Amy. Each of them tells the story from their own point view. That's why both of them tell the story by first-person narrative. The story is about the disappearance of Nick's wife. Nick Dunne arrives home on his 5th wedding anniversary to find his wife, Amy missing. There are signs of a struggle suggesting foul play. Various clues surface implicating Nick in Amy's murder, and while he steadfastly insists he is innocent of any crime, he soon falls under increasing scrutiny as the case begins to garner national attention. What sets this thriller different from others is that the story is also told by Amy at the same time. It shows the reader two different perspectives and each of the narrator is his own story teller. It makes the reader follow the story in all sorts of ways.

Gone Girl is the third work of Gillian Flynn.It became one of the most popular novels of 2012 in western countries. It reached No.1 on the New York Times' bestseller list just six weeks after its release. People who don't have a habit of reading books even read and talk about it. Later it was made into a movie. And it just started a new style of writing novels. In the past, people were used to write novels either adopting the first-person narrative perspective or the third- person narrative perspective. But this novel was written from double narrative perspective.

Both Nick Dunne and Amy are the first- person narrator in the story. After Gone Girl, this new writing style suddenly becomes popular among western writers. This narrative skill is applied in many thrillers such as The Kind Worth Killing, Our House,Her Every Fear and so on. But up to now, there are no thrillers written in such a manner in China. And Gone Girl hasn't been translated into Chinese yet.So there is no Chinese writer who studies Gillian Flynn and her novels. It is a pity that her style of writing thrillers hasn't been studied yet. The study of Gone Girl could provide some new materials for Chinese scholars and students who are interested in the style of writing thrillers.

The thesis adopts the narrative theory of Gerard Genette, a distinguished French critic.Hu Yumin（2004） thinks that narrative perspective means the corresponding position or situation lies between the narrator and incidents in the novel.In other words, it means the narrative perspective has been taken to observe the story. Genette （1990）adopts focalization to replace perspective. He says narrative mode is relied on the distance and narrative perspective. Distance of the narrator changes with a narrated speech, transposed speech and reported speech. He divides focalization into three forms:zero focalization, internal focalization and external focalization. Zero focalization means that there is no fixed perspective. It is omniscient perspective. The narrator knows more information than anyone in the story. Internal focalization is that the narrator can only convey information of one character in the story. Internal focalization can be divided into fixed-internal focalization,transformed-internal focalization and multifocalization. External focalization means the narrator knows less information than the character in the story.

So based on the Genette's narrative theory, the thesis’ author analyzes the narrative perspective of Gone Girl thoroughly and comprehensively. The analysis of the work occurs after the intensive reading of the book. The purpose of the thesis is to find out the advantages of double narrative perspective.

II. Narrative Perspective

A. Research Background on Narrative Perspective

The study of narrative perspective is one of the main researches of modern narratology. The study of novels, especially modern novels, in the theoretical aspect is behind the practical aspect. The study of narrative perspective origins from the creative process of a novelist. In the 1990s, Gustave Flaubert adopted limited narrative perspective in his novel Madame Bovary. It has a unique artistic effect, which makes the novel get rid of the limitation of the traditional omniscient perspective. James defines it as the selfsufficiency of the novel and the impersonalization of the narrative. Gustave Flaubert makes a precise conclusion of his productions: The narrator is just the God. He never shows up in the novel, but readers can feel it everywhere in the novel. On the basis of the constant exploration and practice of Henry James, Proust, Woolf, Faulkner, etc, a large number of successful works with unique narrative perspectives have come out.

Narratology of novel rose at the end of the 19th century, and the narrative perspective was gradually incorporated into the theoretical research system by theorist. Later it became one of the core concepts of narratology. Many narratologists have studied the narrative perspective from different aspects. And they have come up with a lot of similar or related concepts and several distinct classifications in order to explain the meaning of the narrative perspective comprehensively.

The founder of modern novel theory, American novelist, Henry James, develops a new style and focuses on the techniques of the novel, especially the application of narrative perspective. He defines the novel as a direct impression of people's life.One of the purposes of the novel's creation is to break through the boundaries between the usual sense of reality and the artistic fabrication. In order to make the novel present in front of readers selfsufficiently and directly, James advocates that the writer must minimize his own voice, try to take the viewpoint of the narrators in the novel and show the reality under the observation of the narrators.

Some scholars believe that the narrative perspective is the most convenient carrier to bear the writer's own ideology and values. The most important significance of the research on the narrative perspective lies in the different ideological connotation expressed in different perspectives. Zhao Yiheng says the narrator is an indispensable person performing a particular duty in any novels. He has a special social and cultural connection that is often beyond the writer's control. He often forces the writer to create him in a certain way. In short, the research on the narrative perspective has gradually expanded to the ideological level from the early emphasis on formal rhetoric and story structure.

B. Person and Perspective

The novel of the first-person narrative requires a writer who can control the narrator’s inner experience objectively. And it also requires a narrator who can experience and explain his own story personally. The first person is a very suitable for this role. The first persons in Gone Girl are fictional characters. But at the same time,they are the real reflection in the world. The emotion of first- person narrative perspective is vivid.

The first person narrative has more emotions.It comes from people's real experience and emotional needs. It is derived from an inner life impulse and has a strong artistic appeal. The biggest advantage of the first- person narrative is that the reader deeply understands what the narrator says, hears and thinks. During the reading, readers will inevitably participate in the plot of the novel. And the reader will experience the ups and downs of life together with the narrator so that the reader will have a strong resonance.

The third- person narrative has its own advantages as well. The third -person narrative is more objective than the first- person narrative. The narrator observes the story as an outsider. It makes the reader feel like watching a movie while reading.The reader is also thinking while he's enjoying the novel. This kind of thinking is not disturbed by the narrator. It depends entirely on the reader's judgment. The reader can keep an objective attitude to comment on the narrators or events in the novel.Because of the exclusive of the first- person narrative, the novel brings greater credibility and realism to the reader. The third-person narrative can describe some macroscopic scenes from the overall view, and can also penetrate into the mind of the narrators to describe the subtle changes in feelings. It has a wide range of narratives with the greatest freedom.

The person and narrative perspectives are often used together, especially in the traditional narrative theory. The third person is often matched with the omniscient perspective. The first person or second person is often matched with a limited perspective. However, with the further study of the novel theory and the diversification of novel creation, this conventional fixed combination is broken. Shen Dan believes that the relationship between person and perspective is changeable. It should be judged based on the narrator who is in the story or outside the story. In general, the person represents three different types of relations between the narrative perspective and story. The first type is that the narrator is inside the story,telling the story from the perspective of the characters by using the first person. The second type is that the narrator is outside the story. The story is told from the perspective of observers.It usually adopts the third person. The third type is that the narrator can hardly define whether it is inside the story or outside the story. In other words, the narrator exists on the edge of the story,usually using the second person.

The combination of person and perspective plays an important role in the narrative perspective.Since the beginning of the 20th century with the pursuit of the authenticity of the novel and the need for the narrator to display itself, theorists recognize that the third- person narrative and the first- person narrative have similarities in perspective. The omniscience perspective of first person and the limited perspective of third person is gradually incorporated into the research horizon.This makes the study of the narrative perspective a step further.

III. Narrative Perspective in Gone Girl

A. The Specific Application of Internal Focalization

Gerard Genette said that the narrator is the character, which means the narrator only knows or tells what the character knows from the perspective of internal focalization. Specifically in the internal focalization, everything is strictly presented by the version of a person （or a few people）. It relies on a certain person or a few people to observe and experience. It only shows the information that the narrator knows and the inner activity of narrator that may be generated. While in terms of other characters, the narrator is just like bystanders who make a guess of other things according to their own personal experiences, thoughts and feelings.

After reading lots of thrillers, the author has noticed that more than 80% of thrillers adopt internal focalization. So it can be seen that the internal focalization has its own advantages for thrillers. It only shows what the narrator knows.The reader and the narrator in the novel are on an equal footing. It greatly shortens the distance between the narrator and the reader so that the reader gets a sense of intimacy. As American theorist, Wallace Martin says: If the novel is different from other types of narratives, it will be the close connection between the reader and the narrator in terms of truth and reality. In an attitude that is both sincere and false, we believe it and at the same time we doubt it.

The narrative method of adopting the inner focalization undoubtedly plays an important role in increasing the authenticity of the story. Hu Yamin mentions that internal focalization is a kind of perspective with a strict version of limitations.It is precise because of its limited function.And it provides the dead ends or the blank space in literary works. Thus it arises the reader’s curiosity. In Gone Girl, when Nick got home and found his wife missing, he called the police immediately. But his reactions towards his wife’s disappearance weren't reasonable for a normal husband and he even told lies to the police. But why did he tell lies and what was he hiding? The reader didn't know.

Then the next part was Amy's journals. Amy described how she met Nick and how much she loved him in her journal. So the reader begins to wonder what happened to Nick's beautiful wife,Amy? Did Nick have something to do with his wife's disappearance? The reader can only get the Information from the separate perspective of Nick and Amy. So the reader has no idea why Nick behaves strangely in front of police. So it holds the reader's interest from the beginning. At the same time, from the perspective of internal focalization,the narrator acts as the reader's eyes, allowing the reader to follow him everywhere. The thoughts or comments the narrator evokes in his work is very instructive to the reader. In this case, the confusion of the narrator is also the confusion of the reader. And even the reader will understand the story in a wrong way because of the narrator’s subjective judgement and thoughts. It undoubtedly makes the story more complicated.

In Gone Girl, the reader follows the Amy's journal to experience the stories that happened between Nick and Amy. It makes the reader understand how much Amy loves Nick and how many sweet things she has done to make her husband happy. And at the same time, it leaves a bad impression of Nick in the reader's mind. So the reader assumes that Nick isn't the innocent one in terms of his wife's disappearance. But after the reader figures out all of Amy's stories are fake that they are made up by Amy on purpose, the reader cannot understand Amy's behavior and doesn’t trust Amy anymore.The reader’s feeling is also affected by the complicated plots. Compared with simple plots,complicated plots are more attractive to the reader.

According to Gerard Genette, internal focalization can be divided into three different types: fixed-internal focalization, tansformedinternal focalization and multiple-internal focalization. The multiple-internal focalization is adopted in Gone Girl. So the thesis’ author mainly focuses on the application of multiple-internal focalization in Gone Girl. The multiple-internal focalization consists of multiple perspective of the narrators. These narrators observe the same event,but different narrators are in different positions.So the whole picture of the events they observes has its own focus. The conflicts and contrast complement each other and constantly enrich the events so that the original features of events are exposed.

In Gone Girl, Nick tells the story from the day his wife was found to be missing. And when the police investigated the event and interviewed Nick, Nick’s behavior was so different from a normal husband’s reaction. For example, he thought his behavior in the broadcast of his wife’s disappearance was utterly unconvincing. What he said was disconnected and like reading numbers at random.He stood with arms crossed and squeezed, looking almost bored as Amy's parents wept. It makes the reader feel that Nick didn't care about his wife and he was indifferent about his wife's disappearance.And he described his wife as an aggressive, bossy and smart lady. He could never get what was in his wife's mind and what she was thinking. But when Amy told the story about their marriage life, she left an impression that Nick was a selfish and irritable man.

In her earlier journals, the reader had a feeling that Amy was such a sweet, considerate and reasonable wife. Nick was such a fussy and selfish husband. Amy tried so hard to please him and make him happy. For example, when Nick's mom got the cancer. Nick wanted to move back from New York to Missouri where his mother lived. Amy loved her life in New York. Her everything was there. Her parents lived there. She had a job there, but she was willing to sacrifice everything she had in New York to move back to Missouri with her husband. From Nick's perspective, Nick described Amy's attitude and behavior about moving back as a disaster. In his eyes, his wife was annoyed and unhappy about it. He thought she even asked him to do unreasonable things like moving their big bed from New York to Missouri.

The reader can easily notice the differences and contrasts about the way they describe each other and their marriage. The reader starts to think whether there is something to do with Nick about his wife's missing. And what is Amy's real personality? Who is telling lies? Compared with the omniscient zero focalization, the internal focalization provides participating space for the readers, which greatly enhances the reader’s reading interest. Compared with a calm observer, external focalization, the internal focalization adds a certain intimacy and human interest to the story.

C. The Narrative Strategies of the Writer

The narrator refers to the statement of the subject or the voice or the speaker in the story.The narrative is the combination of narrator and the narrative perspective. It is the presence of a narrator that makes the organization and presentation of the story possible, and so that the reader can enjoy a wonderful story. Therefore,there must be at least one narrator in any story.It should be noted that the real writer and the narrator are completely two different concepts. So they should not be confused.

In Gone Girl, the narrators are the characters in the story. They tell their stories or the stories that are related to them. The most prominent feature of the narrator is that they use the first person to tell the story. At this moment, the narrator and the focalization are combined into one. In the narrative works, the narrator is the only media to provide the development of the events for the reader. So at the beginning of the story, the reader instinctively relies on him （ or her） and trusts him （ or her）.

In Gone Girl, there are two narrators, Nick and his wife, Amy. According to Amy's journals, Nick is a selfish, cold, fussy and irresponsible husband who even cheats on his wife. While Amy is like any other wife who wants to have a happy family and tries hard to please her husband. The reader will naturally have sympathy for Amy. Amy is such a good wife. She is so considerate, reasonable generous, and smart.The reader will support Amy without any hesitations.But later on, what surprises the reader is that all Amy's lovely and sweet journals are just made up by her. The reason that she makes up stories is because she wants to build a good image in the reader's mind or she wants to convince herself and therefore the reader who only reads her thoughts so that the reader will blame Nick for his bad behaviors in their marriage. Then the reader will think Nick is the suspect for his wife’s disappearance.

And at the same time, from the perspective of Nick's statements, the reader gets the idea that Nick is not happy with his marriage. He doesn't love his wife anymore. So the story clearly makes the reader have a feeling that Nick might be the one who killed Amy. Because the reader trusts and relies on Amy's statements, so the reader is cheated by Amy completely. When the reader figures out Amy's lies,it is such a shocking and unexpected thing.

This smart strategy makes the story more interesting and unusual. The writer makes good use of the reader’s trust towards the narrator.Obviously because of the particularity of the thriller, the narrator, （especially the omniscient narrator） cannot tell the story and review the facts just as the narrators. In Chinese traditional novels, in order to create mysteries and set suspense, the narrator has to use some narrative strategies.

The changing of the scene is a good strategy to attract the reader’s interest. Just as when Amy succeeds in putting Nick in a miserable situation in which everyone believes Nick killed her. And while Nick clears that he would be willing to pay anything for just getting his wife back. That's what Amy wants. She makes her husband love her again. But she needs to find a way to come back. So she uses Desi who had a crush on her in high school and is still crazy about her as the way to end her plot. She puts sleeping pills into Desi's drink and says she would begin executing her plan once he would be asleep.Then the chapter just ends here leaving the reader hanging in the air.

The next chapter starts with the description of Nick’s wife showing up in front of their house.Nick describes Amy stands barefoot on his doorstep in a thin pink dress that clung to her as if it were wet. Her ankles are ringed in dark violet. From one limp wrist dangled a piece of twine. Her hair is short and frayed at the ends, as if it had been carelessly chopped by dull scissors. Her face is bruised, her lips swollen. But the details of how Amy got hurt and what happened to Desi was omitted.The only thing the reader knows is that Desi was killed by Amy. But why Amy was hurt so badly was a mystery. Because according to Amy's description,Desi treated her well. He didn't do anything to hurt her. Later on, when Amy tells Nick the details about how she killed Desi and created the crime, only at that moment did the reader know Amy had tied wires around her wrists and ankles since the first day she stayed at his apartment, but the information wasn’t mentioned in the earlier chapter when Amy spent her time with Desi.

When the writer tells the story, the story is never told in a simple and straightforward way.In order to set suspense and attract readers, the narrator's narrative often has a jump. The conversion of scenes is one of the narrative strategies that is often used by the narrators. The discontinuity in the plot caused by the transformation naturally attracts the reader’s curiosity.

D. The Analysis of Narrative Order

It is generally believed that there are two kinds of time in the narrative. One is the time of the story development. The other is the time of the narrative, the former obeys to the order of the development of the story. The latter refers to the order that is shown in the narrative under the condition of the natural time of the story development. The time of the story development is also the time of the reality. But in the narrative story, the sequence of events and casualty are changeable.

For example, in Gone Girl, the story that Desi was killed was told in the beginning. Then later on when Nick asked Amy to tell him what exactly happened to Desi and how he died, the details of murdering Desi were shown to the reader. These plots are carefully arranged by the writer to make the story fascinating. In real life, the order of the story should be in a different way. The details of Desi's death should be described first by Amy. Then Amy showed up in front of Nick's door. So in the narrative works, the deliberate arrangements of the narrative structure by the writer can often achieve different effects.

These two kinds of time correspond to two narrative structures: sequence structure and narrative structure. In the sequence structure, the actions in the story are presented in terms of time series and causality. In the narrative structure,the actual story time is cut and recognized by the writer using various techniques to achieve the effect that the writer wants to present. Narrative structure is applied in Gone Girl, especially the application of recollection. Recollection means the narrative represents the former events in the present stage of the story development. It is similar to the flashback in the traditional Chinese narrative theory which is returning to the previous events. One of the main purposes of recollection is to supply the main story. It exists in the process of retracing the previous events after the incidents happened. The purpose of it is to fill in the gaps in the story by complementing the omissions. There are quite a lot of examples of recollection in Gone Girl.

Example one: When Nick arrived at home, he found his wife wasn't there at home. He saw the ironing board was set up, the iron still on,a dress waiting to be pressed. The carpet glinted with shards of glass, the coffee table shattered. The heavy antique ottoman was bell-up. In the middle of the mess was a pair of good sharp scissors. From Nick's view, the reader knows what the room was like and why Nick thought his wife was missing. But the reader knew as much as Nick knew, the reader did not know what happened in the house and why the rooms were in such a mess. The reader knew it until Amy told how she set up everything. The reader was also surprised by how carefully and elaborately Amy designed the mess of the house.

Example two: When the policemen were involved to investigate the event, one of Nick's neighbor whose name is Noelle Hawthorne claimed herself as Amy's best friend. But Nick was shocked about this piece of news. He even asked the policemen whether they were sure about that. According to what Nick knew about Amy, Amy never made friends with anyone. It makes the reader curious about what happened between Amy and Noelle Hawthorne. Then the reader knows the answer from the later part when Amy explained her plans in details. All of these retracing skills are applied to make the reader know the story better.And it helps the writer to tell the story in a suspenseful way, which keeps the reader's curiosity all the time.

In the narrative works, in order to make the structure of the article more compact, the writer has to limit the time and space of the story to a certain extent, which leads to the elimination of a part of the narrative. The omitting part can be presented in the form of the recollection when the story needs it. Mostly recollecting events are difficult to be considered so they are missed at the moment, but they have to be presented because they play an important role in building the narrator’s image and promoting the development of the plots in the story. In terms of building a well-developed narrator image, the narrator sometimes supplements the life experience of the narrator in the way of recollection. And sometimes it is applied to express a personality traits of the narrator, thus making the narrator’s image more complete.

This kind of method is applied in an original way in Gone Girl. As the author described in the previous chapter, Gone Girl is a double narrative story. And it is told from two different perspectives,Nick’s and Amy’s. The times of the two narrators are different. The book is divided into three parts.In the first two parts, Nick talks about the life from the day after his wife’s disappearance. But in those same chapters Amy tells the story in a different time set.

The time difference between the things narrated by both narrators in the same parts of the book. The first part is Amy's journals which are about the previous marriage life of Nick and Amy. The second part is about how Amy designs her own disappearance.The third part tells the story about Amy's back.It mainly explains how everything happens by the conversation between Nick and Amy. So it refers to a lot of recollections. And because of the double narrative perspective, the time set of the story can be arranged differently and in a various way. And at the same time, the reader learns the story from a mor e comprehensive way.

IV. Conclusion

This thesis studies narrative perspective of western thrillers by analyzing the narrative style of Gone Girl. The purpose of the thesis is to show the advantages of double narrative perspective. Most novels adopt either the first -person narrative perspective or the third -person narrative perspective. But Gone Girl applies double narrative perspective. It starts a new narrative style of western thrillers after Gone Girl. So many writers now start writing in a double narrative perspective such as Our House, The Kind Worth Killing and so on.

In the narrative aspect, the thesis focuses on the narrative perspective, the narrator and the narrative order. In the narrative perspective, zero focalization exerts a significant advantage in the western thrillers because of its restricted field of view and the authentic experience. And in terms of the narrator, the first -person narrator makes the reader have a strong feeling towards the story.But at the same time, the unreliability of the narrator’s sayings misleads the reader. This tactic makes the story unexpected and more attractive.And in order to make suspense, the writer uses the certain narrative strategies, including incomplete narrative, scene conversion and detailed control.In the narrative order, the writer reorganizes the story time in order to achieve the suspense effect.

After analyzing the narrative from these three aspects, the author finds that double narrative perspective enlarges the advantages of the firstperson narrative perspective. The reader can observe the story from two different views. Therefore it helps the reader learn the story from a more comprehensive way. The innovation in this paper is that most researchers mainly focus on the study of the first- person narrative and the third- person narrative perspective. But this thesis focuses on the new narrative perspective: double narrative perspective. As an explanatory research, this thesis does not investigate and analyze the ideology aspects of the narrative. The thesis’ author hopes that further studies can provide relative analysis.

Works Cited:

【1】Gillian, Flynn. （2013）. Gone Girl. Great Britain: Phoenix.

【2】Gerard, G. Narratology. （1990）. Trans.Wang Wenrong. Beijing: China Social Science.

【3】Henry, J. The Art of Fiction.（2001）.Trans. Zhu Wen,etc. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

【4】Wallace, M. Recent Theories of Narrative.Beijing: Beijing University, 2005.

【1】Gustave, F. （2000）. Madame Bovary. Paris:Harper LargePrint.

【6】Hu, Y. M. [胡亞敏], 2004, 敘事學(xué). 武漢: 華中師范大學(xué)。

【7】Shen, Y. [申月], 2004, 敘述學(xué)與小說文體學(xué)研究. 北京：北京大學(xué)。

【8】Zhao,Y. H.[趙毅衡], 2013, 苦惱的敘述者. 四川：四川文藝。