The Girl Who loved Tom Gordon

 The book The Girl who loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King shows how the path of our lives can change dramatically completely changing the way in which we look at the journey in our lives. I think in someway the most telling part of the book is when Trisha says that in someway she feels as if she was older than her brother in spirit. I imagine this is because the path her life was put into a better perspective. She realized that in a lot of ways she was unable to control the natural world around her. This is something that she didn’t realize and that most people don’t really think about until they are about to die.

            At the beginning of the book when she gets lost she panics and irrationally tries to find the trail and brakes down in the process of trying to find the path. She went from having what seemed like a set path to being completely lost in the woods. Her choosing to exit the trail away from her brother and mother was Trisha’s way of choosing her path. In this way she is demonstrating her free will by literally choosing her own path. Even along the path that she chose to walk once she was lost allowed her to make decisions that defined her fate. For example, she got to choose to things she ate which sometimes poisoned her and other times offered her vital energy to survive. She even had the choice in most cases to choose the direction that she wanted to walk in even when she came to a cross road. These are all aspects of her journey that she had control over and therefore had free will However, there are other aspects of her journey that proved far from being in her control.

Some aspects of Trisha’s journey that did have an influence over her decision-making and the defining of her path include the mature around her, the God of the lost (dark scary monster), and The voice of Tom Gordon. Nature played a significant role in the determination of Trisha’s journey. When she first gets lost the narrator explains how lucky Trisha had been to have no bad whether in the initial days of her being lost. She didn’t encounter any bad whether except for the last night which may have been a major reason for why she was able to survive. There were also variables in her path that offered food from plants or perhaps cliffs that put road blocks in her path that also played a huge part in whether she survived and which path she chose to take. The so-called monster that lurked in the woods I interpreted to be somewhat like a figure of death. He often times came during the night when Trisha believed that she was in great danger, never knowing whether she would make it through the night. However, she always escaped without being attacked by this creature. I believed this to be her foreshadowed death in the woods that she continued to fight till the bitter end. Lastly, we had the voice of Tom Gordon Which acted as a positive voice that sometimes gave her direction in order to find safety. For example, Tom was the one to point out the gate that she found in the meadow, which pointed her in the right direction of the road. While she still had control over the way she walked she was highly influenced by this internal voice that remained separate from her own thinking. These all acted as forces of determinism.

           

All aspects being considered, I believe that this book can best be categorized as an example of compatibilist. This is because while she did make most of the decisions in direction throughout her journey there were also major influences in her decision to keep moving and depletion and increase of energy. She did not have full control over what she decided to do and how she was able to survive. For this reason it serves mostly as an example of compatibilist