The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Character Analysis

The average nine year old has a panic attack when they lose sight of their family at the grocery store; now imagine being a nine year old lost in the isolation that is the mountains of Maine. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King is told in a third person omniscient point of view mostly following the main protagonist, Trisha McFarland. Trisha is a nine year old girl growing up in a broken home surrounded by a pugnacious teenage brother and a short tempered mother. Let’s not forget to mention an alcoholic father. What truly upsets young Trisha the most about her family is the unnecessary bickering between them all, especially between her mother and brother. If her brother didn’t complain and his mother didn’t react to his rouses then
As a nine-year-old girl she wanted nothing, but to see her family get along, well that and for the Red Sox to win, but that’s hard when you try to drag a teenager against his will to hike the Maine-New Hampshire Appalachian trail. From the moment they stepped foot on the trail the quarreling began, “You don’t understand…you have no clue. I don’t know how things were when you were in junior high, but they’re a lot different now” (King 18). While Pete pulled the whole “no one gets me,” angst filled speech Trisha had tried to gain his or her attention. She called multiple times to alert them that she needed to use the bathroom, but to no avail they were to caught up in their own words. Enough was enough Trisha couldn’t take it any longer so she left the trail to pee and escape the chaos. On her five-minute hiatus Trisha not only managed to lose the trail, but to fall and slid farther away from where she used the bathroom. Too distracted with themselves, Pete and his mother wouldn’t notice that Trisha was gone before it was too
Trisha’s journey through the woods was not only spiritual and eye opening for her, but her family as well. Once, Trisha was finally found her hardship could be seen inside and out. Her lungs were infected with pneumonia, she was bruised, cut, and allover exhausted from her trials. Trisha’s mom wept from joy at the sight of her daughter’s eyes and surprisingly, “ Pete stood next to her, crying in the same silent fashion” (King 217). As traumatic as the event was without the disappearance of Trisha these two couldn’t have been in the same room without snapping, but now they cried together. Now they have learned that there is more to life than arguing and if you don’t stop and look around every once and awhile you miss