Exploring the emotional affect in “Gone Girl” : an appraisal theory analysis

Abstract EN

Emotions have long been a secret world of human beings, otherwise, an interesting topic that encourages researchers to contribute a better understanding of certain aspects of emotions in oral and written texts.

In the current study, a specific analysis is introduced to explore the effect of emotions on the main character in Gone Girl Amy.

Amy increasingly, emotionally, and successfully managed to win over people’s feelings to show herself as a victim.

The novel is written by Gillian Flynn, it is about a psychopath Amy who fantasizes about a perfect marriage with Nick.

Nick for Amy is not as perfect as she dreams; he pushes her to commit many delusions, starts from a faking pregnancy, and ends by killing her ex-boyfriend after accusing him of a fake rape case.

This study intends to explore the distribution of affect resources of Appraisal to learn more about how human emotions affect.

It shows Amy’s positive and/ or negative feelings of Happiness, Security, and Satisfaction.

The results show that Amy is simply “faking” all emotional demonstrations as a woman and wife showing herself as a victim as she tries to benefit from all the circumstances for the success of her plans.

On the other hand, this study shows the applicability of the Appraisal Theory as a linguistics theory on literary texts to reveal the various emotions of characters in novels.

Further, humbly it can give the researchers the chance to extend research and knowledge about this genre.