Shoeless Joe

J. D. Salinger is the real-life reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye. In the novel, Salinger is presented as a writer who no longer writes and publishes and is therefore denying himself his greatest talent. When Ray waylays him, Salinger agrees to accompany him to the Red Sox game in Boston. Soon, they begin to understand each other better and together do research into Moonlight Graham's life in Minnesota. Salinger goes to Iowa to see for himself the baseball field where Shoeless Joe and the other famous baseball players perform.

As a writer with a developed sense of imagination and creativity, Salinger is well able to perceive everything that is taking place at Ray's baseball park. When he receives an invitation from Shoeless Joe to accompany the players past the baseball park, into a world beyond ordinary reality, he puts Ray’s jealousy to rest by telling him that he was chosen because “he is unattached” (215). Salinger also promises Ray that he will resume his writing career, “a man being able to touch the perfect dream. I’ll write of it. I promise” (216).

Shoeless Joe Jackson was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. His career with the Chicago White Sox ended a controversy in 1920 when he admitted to being involved in a plot to throw the 1919 World Series. He was banned from playing the game for life. In the novel, Ray, as well as his father, believes that although Shoeless Joe may have accepted money from gamblers, he did not deliberately throw the World Series. Ray believes that Shoeless Joe was the victim of greedy baseball owners who kept the control of the team completely in their hands. Jackson tells Ray that he loved the game so much that, “I’d have played free and worked for food. It was the game, the parks, the smells, the sounds” (7). Shoeless Joe is one of Ray's heroes, and a hero of his father, too. He is the first baseball player to appear on Ray's baseball field. 

Johnny Kinsella is Ray's father. He served in World War I and was gassed at Passchendaele, after which he settled down in Chicago. He is a White Sox fan who also played semi-pro baseball in Florida and California. At the time of the story, he has been dead for twenty years. Johnny Kinsella has instilled in his son the love for baseball. He considers Shoeless Joe his hero and tells Ray, “Oh, how that man could hit. No one has ever been able to hit like Shoeless Joe” (1).

Johnny Kinsella appears on the baseball park as a young man, playing as a catcher in the games at Ray's baseball park. At first, Ray is not able to gather the courage to approach him, but later he does so, and realizes that he can talk to his father about many things. Ray’s conversation with his father tells the reader that one can reconcile even with the dead, if one has an open heart and mind to connect with one’s loved ones.  

Richard Kinsella is Ray's twin brother. He and Ray have not seen each other since the morning of their sixteenth birthday. On that day, Richard quarreled with their father and walked out of the house and no one in the family has seen or heard of him since. When Ray returns with Salinger, he meets Richard at the farm. Richard is working with a traveling carnival that has stopped in Iowa City. At first, Richard is unable to see what happens on the baseball diamond in the cornfield, so he asks Ray to teach him how to do it. Eventually, Richard is not only able to see what is happening at the baseball field but also is able to perceive and speak to his estranged father.

Mark, Ray’s brother-in-law, is a professor at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City. He is also a businessman and, with his partner, Bluestein, owns apartment blocks and several thousand acres of farmland. Mark is practical and has an interest in the latest technology. He wants to buy Ray's farm so he can modernize it, and pursues his goal ruthlessly. However, his plans to take over the farm are foiled at the end when Ray’s financial woes cease thanks to tourists who wish to see the magical farm start arriving in throngs. Mark, a practical man who is unimaginative and has interest only in earning money, is the opposite of Ray, a man who believes in his dreams.

Archie Graham, also known as Moonlight Graham, is a character based on a real person who played a single for the New York Giants in 1905. He appears in the novel in two forms: as an old man, Doc Graham, a doctor in the small Minnesota town of Chisholm; and as a young man who travels from Minnesota to Iowa with Salinger and Ray in search of a baseball game to play in. Ray meets him in an episode of time travel that takes him back to the year 1955, when Graham is seventy-five years old. Doc Graham is a good-hearted man who is loved and respected in his community. He tells Ray that he got his nickname one night when, after a minor league game, he went for a walk dressed in his baseball uniform. A teammate spotted him, and he was nicknamed ‘Moonlight’ Graham ever after. Graham also appears in the novel as a young man dressed in a baseball uniform. He plays on Ray's fantasy field and gets the chance to bat in the major leagues.

Annie Kinsella is Ray Kinsella's red-haired, twenty-four-year-old wife. Annie is pretty, full of life and good humor, and very loving. She is the wind beneath Ray’s wings, someone who always supports him to fulfill all his fanciful dreams and never reproaches him for being impractical, even as their financial liabilities mount. Ironically, Annie's lack of knowledge about sports is typical of the female characters in sports literature. Her ignorance of sports minutiae and sports in general is indicated when she asks Ray if Joe is the same Jackson he yells at to drop the ball on TV. He jokes that "Annie's sense of baseball history is not highly developed" (11). Like her Victorian counterparts, Annie assumes a submissive role in the novel and embodies a middle-class domestic ideal.

Eddie Scissons is a very old man, and friend of Ray’s. Ray rents and later buys Eddie's farm. Eddie lives at the Bishop Cridge Friendship Center in Iowa City. He is a baseball fan and claims to have followed the Chicago Cubs for eighty years. Mark reveals that Eddie has been lying for years and has never actually played for the Cubs. He has only played part-time, for one year, for a Class D team in Montana. However, Ray helps Eddie fulfill his wish when, as Kid Scissons, he pitches for the Chicago Cubs on Ray's baseball park, even though he performs poorly and is devastated by the experience. Soon after, he passes away and Ray honors his wish to be buried in his Cubs uniform in Ray’s cornfield.  

Karin Kinsella is Ray's five-year-old daughter. Like her father, she is gifted with imagination and has no trouble seeing the baseball games that take place in the cornfield at the farm. Though it is her father that introduces her to the game, it is her own interest and hunger for knowledge that propels Karin to understand the depth of the activities on the field. 

Abner Bluestein is the business partner of Mark, Ray Kinsella's brother-in-law, who wants to take over and modernize Ray’s farm.