The world is a dangerous place and is watching you to make one mistake and it is ready to pounce on you, attack you
and to destroy you. Trisha McFarland was nine years old when she learned this lesson by getting lost in the woods.
This story is based on a nine year old girl Trisha McFarland, who gets lost in the woods. Trisha’s parents were recently divorced and her mothers constantly took trips with her children during the weekends. May be this was her way, to cope with her unhappiness but her son Pete and the daughter Trisha were not happy with this arrangement. During hiking Trisha’s mother and her
brother Pete constantly squabble and bicker about hiking trip as Pete didn’t want to go for hiking. This bickering included the recent divorce of parents and other topic as well. Annoyed with their bickering Trisha decided to get away from them by taking a bathroom trip and than lost her family by taking a wrong trail.
Trisha took the wrong trails and ran deeper into the woods. After a while she
started panicking and took a few more wrong turns and finally got lost in the woods. When she realized this, she started crying but told her self not to cry, as it would create panic and she will never be able to get out of the woods. She took the resolve that she will get out of the woods and any way when her mother and brother would realize that she was not with them, they would report to the police and rescue team will find her. When she looked into her bag she saw she had only one sandwich, one boiled egg, one or two Twinkies, a bottle of surge and her walkman. Her walkman became her solace in the night. During the night she listens to her walkman, which played the Red sox baseball play in which her favorite hero Tom Gordon plays and to find out what is being done for her rescue. When her food finished she had to survive on edible plants like beech nuts, check berries, and drink water from waterfall.
When her mother and brother realized that Trisha was not with them they went back and reported to the police. The rescue parties started searching but could not find her because in her panic Trisha had taken a wrong turn and gone further deep in the woods.
As cops were searching, Trisha tired of walking into the woods, stumbling into thorns being, bitten by wasp, constant hunger, fear and thirst started hallucinating. She also developed diarrhea and other diseases and she started remembering her family, her friends, and her beloved hero Tom Gordon. She started imagining Tom Gordon is walking beside her. Then she started following a spring as in her school her teacher had told her that spring leads to civilization.
She also started imagining that there is an evil force in the woods, which is waiting and watching her, and would get her at any opportunity. In her hallucinating state of mind she gave the beast a name “the god of lost”. Although Stephan king never made it clear, that if the beast was in real or is the hallucination of the lost girl, who was at the end of her wits by now, because of many days wondering in woods and loosing hope of ever getting out of it.
When at last she found the road filled with the noises of driving cars and was about to rescued she faced a bear to which in her hallucinatory state of mind she had given the name “God of Lost”. She screamed and said ‘no not now, I will not allow letting me take with you after I have gone so much ordeal’ and she imitates the Tom Gordon by taking pitchers stance, and threw the walk-man like a baseball hard enough to back it away. A hunter, who came and saw the confrontation between the girl and the bear, killed the beast and rescued the girl. At that moment Trisha knew that she is finally rescued and there is nothing to fear.
After being rescued Trisha had to be hospitalized for many diseases but the worst of all was the double pneumonia. Her mother, father, and brother were beside her in the hospital bed. As her condition was not good, the nurse told the family to leave the room, and let her rest and sleep. Before her father left Trisha told him to give her baseball cap and looked at the sky as Tom Gordon does after closing the game.
Stephan King is a brilliant writer and he keeps the suspense by not making it clear that Trisha was hallucinating in the woods or it was just her imagination, because of her ordeal in the woods. All the same it is a very good read and you develop empathy to the young heroine of the book, admire her courage, her tenacity for getting out of the woods which is rare in the children on this age. Once again Stephen king has written a masterpiece.