The first sentence of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon reads, “The world had teeth and it could bite you with them any time it wanted” (1). With this bleak pronouncement, King sets up one of the novel’s central themes: Life is unfair. Just as there is love and kindness in the world, there is also senseless darkness and cruelty, and the key to navigating the darkness is not losing hope. Trisha’s ordeal in the woods opens her eyes to the ways the world can be cruel to the innocent. She survives by accepting her unjust circumstances and forging ahead anyway.

As children of divorce, Trisha and Pete struggle to accept that their lives are negatively impacted by a decision that was entirely out of their control. The divorce is a major point of contention between Pete and Quilla; the last sentence Trisha hears her brother shout before she gets lost is “[I] don’t know why we have to pay for what you guys did wrong” (21). In the woods, Trisha quickly realizes that there are worse things in life than divorced parents. Despite her bravery and resourcefulness, the world bares its teeth again and again, taking Trisha to the cusp of death.