43 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingThe Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Baseball
Baseball is a central symbol in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Its importance is clear from the novel’s structure, with each chapter is named after an inning, beginning at the Pregame and ending with the Postgame. Trisha’s nine days in the woods constitute the “game” portion of the book, mirroring the nine innings of a baseball game. Basing the chapter titles on innings allows the reader to track how far along Trisha is in her journey, and the game becomes a symbol for her fight to survive by reconciling the forces of luck and skill.
The presence of baseball in the novel goes beyond its structure. Trisha is a fanatical baseball fan, loyal to the Red Sox and to pitcher Tom Gordon. Her father is also a Red Sox fan, and their shared allegiance keeps them connected during her parents’ contentious divorce. After Trisha gets lost in the woods, baseball becomes a beacon of hope, something to believe in when she feels abandoned by God and everyone else. Trisha’s best escape from her surroundings is listening to the Red Sox’s countrywide tour on her Walkman. She fully immerses herself in the games to the point where she feels that her life is connected to the outcome of Tom Gordon’s pitches. As she gets sicker and weaker, listening to Red Sox games helps her hold onto her sanity. She imagines herself in stadiums with her favorite players, talking to them and encouraging them to do well, which helps her stave off loneliness. Tom Gordon becomes a proxy father figure, offering her companionship and advice, first through dreams and then through hallucinations. Although his advice centers around baseball, Trisha applies the principles of his words to her own situation, learning about the value of bravery and calm in the face of pressure.
When Trisha faces off against the God of the Lost, it is the bottom of the ninth inning and she is in a save situation, meaning that she must act with great precision to “save the game” and spare her own life. Her love of baseball once again guides her as she first copies Tom Gordon’s signature stillness and then assumes his pitching position. She throws her Walkman at the creature like a baseball, sending it stumbling backwards. When a nearby hunter (wearing a Red Sox shirt) shoots at the creature, it retreats into the woods, and Trisha proudly thinks that she’s “got the save” (299). Lying in her hospital bed, she imitates Tom Gordon’s signature victory point, bringing the symbolic baseball game to a victorious close.
Trisha’s Walkman
As she navigates the woods alone, Trisha’s Walkman provides a vital link to the outside world. She is able to keep track of the investigation into her disappearance and tune into Red Sox games which provide her comfort and distraction as well as motivation to keep going. The Walkman represents the world which Trisha has left behind, a world in which her family is eagerly awaiting her return. Although she often feels completely alone, the news updates that come through local radio stations remind Trisha that she has not been forgotten and that people are actively looking for her even as she looks for them.
The Walkman dies in Chapter 13, “Bottom of the Ninth,” devastating Trisha as she loses her connection to the wider world and to her precious baseball updates. Although it no longer functions, the Walkman’s role in the narrative is not over. Trisha startles the God of the Lost by throwing the Walkman at its face like a baseball, causing it to stumble long enough to be shot by Travis Herrick. After serving as her figurative lifeline for much of the novel, the Walkman becomes part of her literal salvation at the end, and a metaphor for the triumph of man over nature.
Mona
Mona, or Moanie Bologna, is Trisha’s doll. Trisha feels a strong connection to Mona, who provides her comfort during her parents’ rocky divorce. Although Trisha is mature, with an extensive vocabulary and bravery and resourcefulness beyond her nine years, her reliance on her favorite doll reminds the reader that she is still a child. Mona serves as a symbol for the childhood Trisha leaves behind when she gets lost, and her relationship to the doll reflects her coming-of-age journey.
While Trisha is lost in the woods, she longs for Mona, especially during moments of fear, even clutching her hiking pack like a doll when she first realizes she is lost. The absence of her comfort object highlights how brutally she has been torn away from normal childhood experiences. She has nothing to fall back on for comfort, and so must rely on her own mental fortitude to get through increasingly terrifying experiences. As the novel progresses, Trisha thinks of Mona less and less as her thoughts are occupied by more pressing matters like where to find food, water and shelter. When she wakes up in her hospital bed after being rescued, she does not ask for Mona, signaling that the comparatively carefree childhood she enjoyed at the start of the novel is gone.
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By Stephen King
