Shoeless Joe

“It wasn’t just the baseball game. I wanted it to be a metaphor for something else: perhaps trust, or freedom, or ritual, or faithfulness, or joy, or any of the other things that baseball can symbolize. I only wanted to make you happy…” (97). This passage appears toward the end of Chapter Two of Shoeless Joe. Ray is speaking to J.D. Salinger after the disastrous trip to Fenway, after discovering that the author doesn’t have a passion for baseball likeRay thought. For Ray, the main protagonist of the novel, baseball is the religion he follows. He says, “I count the loves in my life: Annie, Karin, Iowa, Baseball. The great god Baseball” (17).

W.P Kinsella knew what a baseball game would represent to the readers and the novel in the traditional sense and therefore, tells the readers to distrust the typical or assumed meaning attached to the game. Kinsella is telling us not to assume that baseball represents the American Dream, or the failing of the American Dream, or any of the other possible meanings that he lists, but to figure out for ourselves what baseball means in the context of this book.

The "magic waters" (65) of baseball allow Shoeless Joe to begin his career anew and have a soothing effect on Salinger and Richard, Ray's twin brother. When Salinger disappears with the players into the cornfield, there is hope that he will regain the creativity and passion that he had as a younger writer. The game, therefore, becomes simply a metaphor for life. It means different things to the different characters in the novel, which connect the game to their subjective experiences and allow each a shot at redemption. 

When Ray visits the carnival in Iowa City to meet Gypsy, Raymond’s girlfriend, she shows him inside the trailer, where there are about a dozen glass containers. Each of the containers contains a faded black and white photograph of a deformed fetus. The image of twelve dead fetuses symbolizes the aborted dreams of Ray, which he tries to bring back to life in his baseball park. The twelve fetuses are the eight banned White Sox players, along with Moonlight Graham, Eddie Scissons, Johnny Kinsella and J. D. Salinger.

The image of the fetuses can be related to an incident from Ray’s childhood when he shot dead a sparrow. To discourage him from killing animals for sport, his mother tells him to bring the bird to life again. Since then, Ray learned that there are some things that cannot be brought back to life, while there are others that can be, such as forgotten hopes and frustrated desires. The sparrow incident is linked to the image of the dead fetuses when Ray calls his mother and tells her she must come and see "what I've brought to life" (156). He is referring to the baseball field, a symbol of the revival of his frustrated dreams and of many others who are connected to it. 

Religion, as a motif, pervades the entire book. Kinsella presents a strong contrast between traditional Christianity and a religion that is life-promoting, mediated by the game of baseball. Traditional religion is presented in a negative light, epitomized by Annie's mother, who is self-righteous and judgmental and brings religion into any conversation. Mark, Ray's ruthless brother-in-law, is also a fundamentalist Christian. Other people in the novel who adhere to traditional Christianity are Eddie Scissons's three daughters.

By contrast, the game of baseball is presented as a kind of quasi-religion. Rays says about baseball fans, "We're not just ordinary people, we're a congregation," (63). The baseball field at night "is more like a church than a church" (86). Ray imagines baseball fans as people who experience awe, wonder, anticipation and joy, while joy is lacking in Ray's perceptions of the traditional Christianity. The game of baseball also offers the possibility to several characters, of miraculous events that can transcend or reverse time. 

“There is a magic about it, you have to be there to feel the magic” (98). Kinsella allows his characters in Shoeless Joe to discover and realize their dreams as long as they are willing to suspend their skepticism about miracles and magic and embrace their own imaginations. Kinsella uses the literary technique of magic realism to establish a realistic setting in which fantastic events are accepted as part of the natural world. The characters encounter magic in their everyday life as if it were a real, concrete event. After Ray and Salinger talk with elderly Moonlight Graham, Ray encounters a reincarnation of the younger Graham and helps him achieve his dream to play baseball. The appearance of Ray’s father on the magical baseball park allows Ray to catch up with his father and bury the resentments of the past.

Kinsella’s poetic, lyrical style evokes the “magic” of the baseball field. Just before Shoeless Joe appears for the first time, Ray senses the magic that is approaching, "hovering somewhere out in the night like a zeppelin, silky and silent, floating like the moon until the time is right” (67). These and other descriptions provided by the author add to the feeling of magic and enchantment that pervades the novel. His descriptions appeal directly to the senses of the readers. After Ray's first talk with Shoeless Joe, "A breath of clover travels on the summer wind. Behind me, just yards away, brook water splashes softly in the darkness, a frog shrills, fireflies dazzle the night like red pepper. A petal falls" (89).