Meika Hashimoto's The Trail

The main character, the principal character, the protagonist, all the same person whose name is otherwise known as Toby. Throughout The Trail, you will learn a lot about Toby, and get a deeper understanding for what it is he is going through. This is because the author, Meika Hashimoto, does a great job portraying Toby as the character he really is through his actions and character traits. One example of these character traits is him being extremely pessimistic, which is basically seeing the worst in everything, or believing that the worst is almost always going to happen. As expressed in the book, “Like a total moron, I literally exited my campsite and started walking back in the direction I’d come from . Of course I messed up. I always do...Typical.

Throughout the book, events occur that reveal similarities and differences between the two. One of the biggest similarities that they share, and what they bond over the most is just being outdoors. On page 10 of The Trail, it explains, “But most of the time it was just me and Lucas...Sometimes we’d swing bats in Norwich’s perfectly measured ball fields, or go to a pool party in town, but our favorite thing to do was to go camping behind my house,” (Hashimoto). Although this seems to be a simple similarity, it is major because it is somewhat the driving force of the book. Toby and Lucas’s love for camping is part of the reason that Toby is hiking the Appalachian Trail in the first place, so without that similarity, there may not have been a story at all. As for the differences between the two, there are a few, but that is what allows Toby and Lucas to balance each other out so well. As insisted in the book, “When we reached the rope swing, the muddy water below was the lowest I'd ever seen. It made the rope swing seem even that much higher. It made me that much more afraid. But Lucas was never afraid of anything. He peered over the side of a quarry and laughed,” (Hashimoto 138). As you can probably tell, Toby was more of the timid, uneasy type, whereas Lucas takes initiative, and is more of the courageous, daring type. The similarities and differences of Toby and Lucas’s personalities are what allows them to mesh so well because they can bond over being outdoors, but then they give the other person a little bit of what they may lack when it comes to their