The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

“Trisha, as was increasingly her habit, became brightly enthusiastic. These days she often sounded to herself like a contestant on a TV game show, all but peeing in her pants at the thought of winning a set of waterless cookware. And how did she feel to herself these days? Like glue holding together two pieces of something that was broken. Weak glue.”

Before getting lost, Trisha’s biggest problem is her fractured family dynamic. She’s only nine years old but feels responsible for holding together her family by acting perpetually cheerful, suppressing the normal emotions of a child undergoing a shift in her family’s structure.

“Her voice trembled, became first the wavery voice of a little kid and then almost the shriek of a baby who lies forgotten in her pram, and that sound frightened her more than anything else so far on this awful morning, the only human sound in the woods her weepy, shrieking voice calling for help, calling for help because she was lost.”

Trisha’s reaction to getting lost in the woods underscores the fact that she is a kid suddenly thrust into a terrifying situation. While she initially tries to remain strong, she breaks down and cries when she accepts that she is in danger. This is the first time we’ve seen Trisha show a strong emotion, as she usually bottles up her feelings to make her family life easier. Her breakdown foreshadows how being lost in the woods will help her connect to her emotions and get to know herself better.

“There were times, when her parents were getting ready to divorce and then actually doing it, when Mona had felt like her only comfort; there were times when not even Pepsi could understand. Now her parents’ divorce seemed like very small beans. There were bigger problems than grownups who couldn’t get along, there were wasps for one thing, and Trisha thought she would give anything to see Mona again.”

Being lost gives Trisha perspective on her situation as she begins to realize that the world contains bigger problems than the hard parts of her life in Sanford. While this passage signals the start of Trisha’s coming-of-age, her wish to see her doll Mona once again highlights how young she is.

“Neither of her parents were churchgoers—her Mom was a lapsed Catholic, and her Dad, so far as Trisha knew, had never had anything to lapse from—and now she found herself lost and without vocabulary in another way. She said the Our Father and it came out of her mouth sounding flat and uncomforting, about as useful as an electric can-opener would have been out here.”

As another day ends without rescue, Trisha grasps for reassurance in the form of faith, but her secular upbringing means she lacks a pre-existing relationship to any God. Her quest to figure out what she believes in (and what believes in her) is one of the novel’s key themes.

“I don’t believe in an actual thinking God that marks the fall of every bird in Australia or every bug in India, a God that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die—I don’t want to believe in a God who would deliberately create bad people and then deliberately send them to roast in a hell He created—but I do believe in something.”

This quote is from Larry McFarland after Trisha asks him whether he believes in God. Spirituality is central to Trisha’s narrative, and here her father touches on the scary concept that God would create people and then let them suffer without intervening. This is a fear that Trisha has to face in the woods as she tries to sort out her relationship to the concept of a higher power.

“If we win, if Tom gets the save, I’ll be saved. This thought came to her suddenly—it was like a firework bursting in her head.”

Baseball is vitally important to the narrative. Trisha is a die-hard Red Sox fan, to the point where she ties her own fate in with Tom Gordon’s success on the pitch. Although the real Tom Gordon does not control Trisha’s circumstances, baseball does play a major part in Trisha’s survival by providing her hope and a reason not to give up during the harshest of her trials. Baseball becomes the closest thing Trisha has to religion.

“‘Baby bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting,’ he said, leaning toward her, and she could smell his breath. He didn’t need another beer, he was drunk already, the air coming out of him smelled like yeast and dead mice. ‘Why do you want to be such a little chickenguts? You don’t have a single drop of icewater in your veins.’”

Although she loves her father, Trisha’s dream highlights Larry’s flaws as a parent. He is an alcoholic, and his behavior in this dream suggests that his drinking negatively affects his relationship with Trisha. Like Quilla, his own issues impede him from showing up for his daughter in the way that she needs.

“You have to try to get ahead of the first hitter, was what he said. You have to challenge him with that first pitch, throw a strike he can’t hit. He comes to the plate thinking, I’m better than this guy. You have to take that away from him, and it’s best not to wait. It’s best to do it right away. Establishing that it’s you that’s better, that’s the secret to closing.”

Tom Gordon’s advice to Trisha on how to close a game centers around belief in oneself. To get through her own survival game, Trisha has to learn to believe in herself and trust her ability to handle whatever is thrown at her.

“Trisha was frightened by that voice all over again. The stuff it said was bad; that she should have discovered such a dark girl hiding inside her was even worse.”

Part of Trisha’s coming-of-age involves discovering and then confronting the part of her that doesn’t believe she is capable of surviving. She eventually learns to live with the “dark girl” inside of her and not let her dark thoughts win out over her hope and determination.

“She made mud with her fingers, taking a great deal of pleasure in the process (it was Gramma Andersen she thought of, making bread in Gramma Andersen’s kitchen on Saturday mornings, standing on a stool to knead the dough because the counter was too high.)”

Trisha’s active imagination helps her find moments of happiness in the midst of her life-threatening circumstances. She is able to relate making mud to comforting memories of time spent with her grandmother. Her enjoyment of kneading the mud also reminds the reader once again that she is just a kid.

“She pretended Tom Gordon was with her, keeping her company, and then after a while she didn’t have to pretend anymore. He walked along beside her, and although she knew he was a hallucination, he looked as real by daylight as he had by moonlight.”

As Trisha gets sicker, the line between her subconscious and reality blurs. Although this results in several terrifying hallucinations, it also allows her to speak with her hero and inspiration Tom Gordon. The physical hallucination of Tom Gordon stands in for the part of Trisha that refuses to give up even when the odds seem impossibly stacked against her.

“In that moment she was at peace, more than at peace. She was experiencing her life’s greatest contentment. If I get out of this, I’ll never be able to tell them, she thought.”

In the middle of her journey, Trisha stops to appreciate the pure beauty of a sunlit clearing. Moments like these contrast the harsher aspects of the woods and remind the reader of nature’s capacity for beauty and goodness.

“I don’t know why we have to pay for what you guys did wrong! That was the last thing she had heard Pete say, and now Trisha thought she knew the answer. It was a tough answer but probably a true one: just because. And if you didn’t like it, take a ticket and get in line. Trisha guessed that in a lot of ways she was older than Pete now.”

A key theme of the novel is accepting that life can be unfair. Pete, who doesn’t know a world outside of his suburban middle-class home, has a hard time processing that bad things can happen through no fault of one’s own. Trisha, after her experiences in the woods, knows that life can be hard for no reason, a realization which makes her more mature than her older brother.

“‘He can’t help you,’ Bork the Dork said. ‘There’s a lot going on today. There’s been an earthquake in Japan, for instance, a bad one. As a rule, he doesn’t intervene in human affairs, anyway, although I must admit he is a sports fan. Not necessarily a Red Sox fan, however.’”

Playing into the theme of faith’s complexities, this message from the God of Tom Gordon confirms Trisha’s fear that there is no greater force for good looking out for her. In the absence of a benevolent God, she will have to save herself.

“‘The world is a worst-case scenario and I’m afraid all you sense is true,’ said the buzzing wasp-voice.”

The God of the Lost embodies all of Trisha’s worst fears. Having gotten a glimpse at the random sadness and danger of life, she now fears that the whole world is a sad and evil place, a worry that the God of the Lost is happy to confirm. Going forward, she will have to fight not to let this mindset consume her.

“‘I point because it’s God’s nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth,’ Tom said.”

By this point in the narrative, Trisha’s hope that she will survive is wavering. Tom Gordon revives her faith by telling her that God tends to intervene in the very last inning of the game. Since he is a figment of Trisha’s imagination, his encouragement means that there is still a part of Trisha that has not given up.

“‘God, what do I do now?’ Trisha asked. It was a genuine prayer, both agonized and bemused. It was her body that answered, not her spirit.”

Trisha continues to explore her faith in dire moments. Although her earlier attempts to pray have felt empty, this appeal comes from her heart, as she is truly desperate and out of options. The fact that her prayer is answered not by an outside force but by her own body suggests that the guidance she is looking can be found by having faith in herself as well as in God.

“She knew she was doing a full-fledged tantrum now, the first one since she’d been five or six, and didn’t care. She threw herself onto her back, pounded her fists, then opened them so she could tear handfuls of grass out of the ground and throw them into the air. ‘I WANT TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!’”

Trisha has remained remarkably level-headed through trials that would push even an adult to the breaking point. This tantrum is a moment of catharsis for her, allowing her the kind of emotional release that she suppresses when around her family.

“The radio was her lifeline, the games her life preserver. Without them to look forward to she thought she would simply give up.”

Trisha’s Walkman plays an important role in her survival by connecting her to the outside world. It is a tangible symbol of the outside world and everything Trisha is fighting to regain. Although Trisha thinks that she would give up without her baseball games, when the Walkman runs out of batteries a few chapters later, she finds the strength to carry on without her lifeline, proving that she is stronger than she thinks.

“‘This is your last chance, you know.’

‘What?’ She looked at him uneasily.

‘It’s the late innings now. Don’t make a mistake, Trisha.’”

The significance of King’s choice to base the novel’s structure on a baseball game becomes clear in the final few chapters. In the “late innings” of the book, Trisha’s story is nearing its conclusion, leaving the reader to wonder whether she will emerge victorious like her baseball hero.

“She stood in the set position and let the stillness spin out around her. Yes, it came from the shoulders. Let it eat her; Let it beat her. It could do both. But she would not beat herself.

Facing the God of the Lost after a long game of cat-and-mouse, Trisha finally channels all of the advice she has learned from Tom Gordon. After her time in the woods, she knows that she is strong, smart, and capable of relying on herself, and this knowledge allows her to remain calm and confident.

“At the same instant she saw that the bear was just a bear again, its eyes big and glassy and almost comically surprised. Or perhaps it had been a bear all along. Except she knew better than that.”

King leaves the true nature of the creature which stalks Trisha unresolved. It’s up to the reader decide whether it was truly an evil faceless God of the Lost or just a black bear. Just like Trisha, the reader is left to contemplate the presence of danger below the surface of the ordinary.

“She opened her eyes and the woods rolled away into some darkness that would never entirely leave her now—What path?”

Trisha has survived and made it out of the woods, but she will never be the same girl she was before getting lost. The phrase “what path?” alludes to a new uncertainty that will always be a part of her life now that she has seen the dark side of a world that once seemed safe and simple. Although she is still a kid, the blissful ignorance of her childhood is over.