Gordie Lachance Analysis

As Gordie Lachance once said, “That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear” (293). Gordie Lachance, Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp, and Vern Tessio were best friends who had taken a journey to Harlow to find a dead young boy. King uses an experienced speaker, has an atrocious occasion, speaks with a diverse audience, conveys a valuable purpose, and communicates a beneficial subject to help the reader feel nostalgic and acquire the lessons Gordie Lachance learned along his adventurous expedition. At the beginning of the novella, the reader discovers that the speaker is a grown man who is reflecting on his audacious childhood. He/she can infer that the narrator
Vern Tessio ran to the treehouse on a hot afternoon to ask his close friends if they wanted to see a dead body. Gordie thoroughly thought about all the various ways the boy could have died, such as getting “smothered in a gravel pit slide… and ten years from now some hunter would find his bones” (300). He described the area by saying that “ Nothing like that could happen in southwestern Maine today; most of the area has become suburbanized… But in 1960 the whole area between Chamberlain and Castle Rock was undeveloped, and there were places that hadn’t even been logged since before World War II. In those days it was still possible to walk into the woods and lose your direction there and die there” (300). By going to unknown areas during the hot weather, the boys risked their safety and became adventurous before they went back to school. Although Gordie wrote his story to entertain and make an easy connection with the reader, he also wrote it to assist the reader in becoming aware of the realities of the world. As he went through these life changing events, he realized that the world can be