Stephen King’s novels are often accused of being pulp literature. People have trouble seeing that King is extremely conscious about what he does, both stylistically and literarily. His books often have depths that people who dislike his writing never see. The horror he uses is the Gothic horror that deals with nature, light and dark, good and bad. The good and bad theme in Gothic has its origin in religion and allegory. These features often appear in novels by King and this is also the case in this novel; The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I will mainly examine the symbols life as a journey and life as a game. Trisha McFarland is nine years old when she gets lost in the big woods of Maine. Her struggle is about how to survive and also how to succeed doing so. Her only imaginary companion is her greatest hero, Tom Gordon, who is a baseball player in The Red Sox. He is the one who gives her the courage to reach her goals, and also to find and trust herself. She receives redemption when she faces the evil that follows her, and that is also the end of a comparable Via Dolorosa.