Nature as a Menacing Force
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon begins by transporting Trisha McFarland from her familiar urban environment into the expansive wilderness of Maine, emphasizing the inherent dangers from the outset. King, deeply embedded in the American literary tradition, swiftly draws both Trisha and his readers into a quintessentially American setting, where he places his human protagonist against a vast and threatening natural world.
Similar to characters in classic American literature, Trisha soon discovers that Nature is far more complex than she initially believed. Initially worried about her situation, she tries "not to let herself think. This is serious, this is very serious. Trying not to think that sometimes when people got lost in the woods they got seriously hurt. Sometimes they died." King certainly doesn't minimize the threats posed by unspoiled nature. On her first night in the forest, Trisha faces a fierce thunderstorm, is bitten by mosquitoes, stung by wasps, suffers from extreme hunger and thirst after finishing her packed lunch, and is pursued by what could be a fully grown North American black bear or a terrifying creature. She eventually develops pneumonia, leaving her feverish, shivering, and potentially hallucinating. Even without supernatural elements, Nature is portrayed as hostile to those unfamiliar with it.
Nature as a Source of Sustenance and Wonder
On the other hand, when life is reduced to its essentials, Trisha discovers she can survive in the wilderness by consuming checkerberries, fiddlehead ferns, beechnuts, and even a raw trout caught with the remnants of her poncho. She learns that the natural world is full of both wonders and her greatest fears. For example, while lost in the forest, Trisha comes across a family of beavers and a mother deer with her two fawns. Her excitement upon seeing the beavers is palpable: "She stood on tiptoes, holding the trunk of the tree for balance. . . . He appeared to have whiskers, and his fur was a luxuriant dark brown. . . . Looking at him made her think of the illustrations in The Wind in the Willows."
Human Connection and Isolation
Despite being alone in the wilderness, Trisha maintains her connection to other people. She avoids starvation by recalling her mother's teachings about checkerberries and fiddleheads and what she learned about beechnuts in "science class at school." Her Walkman, as long as its batteries last, keeps her connected to the outside world and her hero, Tom Gordon. Once the batteries die, she holds onto it as her last link to civilization. This connection ultimately provides her with a weapon to throw at the bear-like creature. This desperate act might have been what saved her life: "She looked into the bear-thing's empty eyes and understood it meant to kill her no matter what. Courage was not enough. But so what? If a little courage was all you had, so what? It was time to close." Before this final confrontation, while spending the night in an old, abandoned truck, she realizes the enduring power of human connection over the unknown: "It came for you, it meant to take you. Then you climbed into the truck and it decided not to, after all. I don't know why, but that's what happened."
Spiritual Isolation and Growth
While The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon can be interpreted as a simple adventure story about a young girl lost in the wilderness, Stephen King also uses Trisha's predicament as a metaphor for spiritual solitude. Much like Dante Alighieri, whose protagonist in the famous Comedy finds himself having "strayed into a dark forest, / And the right path appeared not anywhere," Trisha is lost both physically and spiritually. King uses this metaphor, illustrating it through Trisha's realization that "she had learned to stay on the path. ....
(This entire section contains 311 words.)
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. . On the path you were safe." When she tries to pray, she finds herself at a loss: "Neither of her parents were churchgoers—her Mom was a lapsed Catholic, and her father . . . had never had anything to lapse from—and now she discovered herself lost and without vocabulary in another way."
In the forest, she meets three figures that symbolize various spiritual journeys. The first figure claims to come "from the God of Tom Gordon... The one he points up to when he gets the save." The second figure, resembling her father, calls himself the Subaudible, a term her father uses to describe the force that "prevents drunk teenagers... from crashing their cars... that keeps most planes from crashing even when things go wrong. Not all, just most." This figure admits, "I'm actually quite weak. I can't do anything for you, Trisha. Sorry." The most terrifying is the third figure, who claims to be "from the God of the Lost" and warns her, "The skin of the world is woven of stingers, a fact you have now learned for yourself. Beneath there is nothing but bone and the God we share." This menacing figure will continue to torment Trisha nearly until the end of the novel: "You could call it whatever you wanted—the lord of dark places, the emperor of understairs, every kid's worst nightmare."
Faith and Redemption
Standing against this dark force is Trisha's hero, the baseball player Tom Gordon. He serves as her protector and guide, much like Virgil was to Dante. On her first night lost in the woods, she turns on her Walkman and, fortunately, tunes into a Red Sox game where Gordon clinches a victory. She ascribes almost mystical significance to this event: "She was lost but would be found. She was sure of it. Tom Gordon had gotten the save, and so would she." King suggests that Gordon's trademark gesture after a win is a sign of his faith in God: "Gordon did what he always did when he secured the save: pointed at the sky. Just one quick point of the finger." Trisha briefly adopts Gordon's faith when "she pointed briefly up, the way Gordon did. And why not? Something had brought her through the day... And when you pointed, the something felt like God."
Throughout the novel, Trisha's faith wavers, but she ultimately remembers Gordon's words when she confronts the bear, referred to as the God of the Lost: "It's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth. . . . And what was the secret to closing? Establishing who was better. You could be beaten . . . but you must not beat yourself." Trisha overcomes the God of the Lost by believing in Tom Gordon and his god, and by having confidence in herself. The story ends with Trisha in a hospital bed, fighting pneumonia, but surrounded by a family that has also embraced this God. She nods to her father and raises her right index finger. "The smile which lit his face . . . was the sweetest, truest thing she had ever seen. If there was a path, it was there. Trisha closed her own eyes on his understanding and floated away into sleep." It appears that Trisha not only redeems herself but her family as well.
Emotional Growth and Baseball as a Metaphor
Thus, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon functions as both a spiritual journey and a bildungsroman—a novel focusing on the main character's developmental years—delving into Trisha's emotional maturation. Despite spending just nine days in the wild, she discovers she has acquired a wealth of life experience. She even acknowledges that "in a lot of ways she was older than Pete now." This book is also one of the latest in a collection that uses baseball, America's cherished pastime, as a symbol for the pursuit of something greater and more powerful than oneself. Though other writers have employed baseball as a metaphor for life's journey, few have explored the idea of the "save" as thoroughly as King does.