The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

In this novel, Stephen King weaves a story of a young girl who fights between her inevitable fate and her will to survive.  Different characters and themes throughout the book show the different aspects of free will, determinism, and compatibilism.

In my opinion, Trisha’s image of Tom Gordon can be seen as the very embodiment of free will.  She envisions him as her hero and protector.  On the pitcher’s mound, he stands still, unlike the others, and starts by showing that he is in control.  With the odds against him, he still manages to make the save.  Trisha uses this as a metaphor for her own situation.  She knows that it seems to be pre-determined that she will not survive.  However, her faith in Tom Gordon is what keeps her going, making her own choices, refusing to give up the fight to survive.

There is the also interesting matter of Trisha’s belief that saying something is true, is what in fact makes it true.  She at first refuses to admit to herself that she’s lost.  Once the circumstances make this obvious, she can no longer deny it, and finally admits it.  The reader’s guide described this as a symbol for her loss of control.  She hoped that if she kept trying to find the trail, and didn’t say she was lost, it wouldn’t be true.  This happens again while she’s listening to the Red Sox game on her Walkman.  When the announcer describes a batter as “dangerous,” Trisha is distraught, thinking, “Why did he have to start in with that ‘always dangerous’ horsepucky when any fool knew that only made them dangerous?”  Her thought process seems to be that believing in something is what makes it real.  I think this ties in to her fear of the creature hunting her.  In the beginning, she refuses to believe it, assuming it’s only her imagination in the woods at night.  But by the end of her story, there is no denying that she’s being stalked by something, and she has become brave enough to face the bear alone, fighting “its” plan for her and choosing her own path.

There are several different forms that determinism takes in this story.  The original path was the hiking trail that Trisha strayed from.  Throughout the novel, she expresses her regret over leaving the path, telling herself that things would have been much easier had she stayed on it.  However, when one wonders what events would take place after the end of the novel, it’s very likely that the experience would bring the family closer together.  Perhaps Trisha’s parents remarry, or perhaps her brother stops arguing so much.  There’s also an implication of newfound religion at the end of the novel.  “The smile which lit his face from the eyes down” implies that Trisha’s revelation of Tom Gordon’s God being a saving force is shared with her father, possibly overcoming his belief in the Subaudible.  It could be argued that even this was planned, in order to bring Trisha’s family closer together and perhaps open their minds to God’s existence.

In our group meeting, we discussed the “evil creature” as another force of determinism.  Once Trisha was lost in the woods, the mysterious evil “thing” was in control of her destiny.  She only had control over small choices of survival, unable to find any other human life or escape what was hunting her.

In the end, however, she made it out of the woods, defeated the bear, and was reunited with her family.  The end of the story implies that compatibilism was the force most strongly at work.  Like in The Adjustment Bureau, determinism was an evil force that the protagonist set out to fight against in the pursuit of free will.  Whether it was the literal path on the hiking trail, God’s will, or the God of the Lost’s plan for Trisha, there was undoubtedly a force (or several) of determinism at work in the woods.  Trisha was strong-willed enough, partially thanks to her own imagined encouragement and advice from Tom Gordon, to keep surviving until the bear was killed and she could make it back home again.

The different events in this story clearly convey free will, determinism, and compatibilism.  The struggle and mutual existence of both choice and predestination in Trisha’s experience show the existence of compatibilism in her story.