"Shoeless Joe" by W.P. Kinsella

Paper Summary:

The writer of this paper describes Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" as an imaginative baseball story that naturally weaves together fact and fantasy. The plot of the novel revolves around Ray Kinsella, a baseball loving farmer from Iowa whose also a radical and creative thinker. One day Ray hears a strange voice saying, "If you build it, he will come". Ray thinks the "he" refers to baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. This paper examines the author's use of baseball as a metaphor and how he uses the game to tell us more about who we are and what we require. This paper also gives a detailed history of baseball and the American fascination with this sport.

From the Paper:

"With statistics like that many have wondered how he has been charged of throwing games. After the ban of Shoeless Joe from baseball, out of fable and legend, with each passing year, his figure as a player grew mostly. Time feeds nostalgia according to Seymour; as each generation of players move away into the past, it slowly becomes surrounded in a fabric of fiction. Shoeless Joe became a legendary hero in baseball history due to his glittering past. The following all had a say to his legend: his nickname, his bat named "Black Betsy", and the way people spoke of their memories of him. This mythical stature is so strong that after sixty years, the society presented him a fair trial and a renaissance through literature and film. (Kurt, 2001)"

More papers on "Shoeless Joe" by W.P. Kinsella:

• Analytical Essay # 42160 : "Shoeless Joe"
• Analytical Essay # 22658 : "Yamamoto" by Edwin P. Hoyt"
• Book Review # 134732 : "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and Baseball Superstition"

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