The Unreliable Narration And Discourse Power In The Construction Of Subjectivity In Gone Girl

Being a New York Times’ bestseller in 2012, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl deeply explore various themes concerning family dynamics, effect of modern media and relationship between male and female.This thesis intends to bring the discussion of narrative strategies, discourse power and sociological view of love and marriage together to delineate a gloomy picture of middle-class people’s lives under the influence of modern media and economic breakdown. Amy and Nick’s power play and mutual-manipulation reveal the disillusionment of marriage life as well as a new pursuit of subjectivity in the modern era. In Chapter One, Amy’s construction of a “victim role” and Nick’s construction of a “vicious role” through unreliable narration subvert the binary opposition between good and evil and portray a floating female identity with destructive power. In Chapter Two, modern media and diary become two discourse power that can destruct people’s subjectivities and in the meanwhile be utilized as productive tools in the reconstruction of the protagonists’ subjectivities. In Chapter Three, a macroscopic research of love and marriage as discourse in modern era is discussed to offer new approach to the reconceptualization of people’s subjectivity.My research will provide new insight how we understand Foucault’s concept of power and love and marriage as new discourse power in the modern era.