Skip to main content

Is Shoeless Joe, by W. P. Kinsella, just a harmless fantasy or does it have relevance for day-to-day life? What guidance for how life should be...

There are several ways the story offers relevance to day-to-day life, an idea for which Ray Kinsella's discussions of Holden Caulfield provide a metaphor. One instance in W. P. Kinsella's "build it, he will come" fantasy that provides day-to-day life relevance is the idea that nothing is finished until the metaphoric last man is out. The metaphoric "last man" can be anything any person is facing in life: it can be the needed effort, the needed bit of patience, the last interview, the last assignment, the last story written, or the last man on base. In daily life, no metaphoric street is crossed, no bridge burned, no gain made, and no loss recorded until every chance is taken and every opportunity fulfilled.

Within the baselines [of a baseball field] anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That’s why they say, “The game is never over until the last man is out.” Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible.


Ray's epiphany is relevant to day-to-day life because at any stage along the way of life's ball game, things can change. Sometimes they can change because of active choices a person makes, metaphorically like hitting a ball out of the stadium for a home run; other times, situations can change because of an action or error another person makes, like tagging the last man out or missing the grounder, which allows runners to reach home. You can make the right choice of what to study in college. Someone can give you your first violin or guitar. You can miss a bus and meet the person you'll love. In life, until the last moment, choices, actions, and serendipity can change your "colors" and "alter" your life because "anything is possible."


Guidance for How Life Should Be Lived


Jerry (J. D. Salinger) articulates one aspect of Ray's guidance for how life should be lived. In the conversation between Ray and Jerry at Boston's Fenway Park, where they go to watch a Red Sox game, Ray presses for an explanation as to why Jerry quit publishing. Jerry bursts out with the comment that Ray's whole pestering attack is about the concept of sharing.



"But why quit publishing altogether?" [Ray] persists. . . "[W]hy deprive all the people who love you of hearing your voice on the page?" 
. . . "What we’ve been talking about, whether you know it or not, is sharing," [Jerry says].



One aspect of guidance Ray gives, both in action and in conversation, is to share. Ray discovers two kinds of sharing: sharing your essence—that which is your difference—and sharing common ground—that which you have in common with another. When Ray's twin brother, Richard, appears and sees the baseball field in action (although he alone of the observers cannot see it, only sense an unidentifiable "it"), Ray is sharing his essence and his difference. He even says that now that he has shared the field with Richard, he finally knows the difference between himself and this man who has his face, his voice, his smile and his laugh: "Richard's eyes are blind to the magic. There is finally a difference between us."


When Ray gets up the courage to share a conversation with the catcher, Johnny Kinsella (his father at a young age), he is sharing "common ground" (the opposite of his essence, his difference); he is sharing things that unite and are held in common by both. Eddie, on the last night of his life, tells Ray to "go up to the man and tell him that you admire the way he catches a game of baseball." Eddie tells Ray to share "what you've got in common"and make that their "common ground," because not many people "get a second chance" to share. 

Although the debate between Ray and Jerry on sharing hasn't yet been settled on the night that Jerry, Kid Eddie, Richard, and Ray watch the White Sox play with the new catcher, Johnny, and the new recruit Moonlight Graham, Jerry acknowledges the guidance that life should be lived by sharing—whether sharing essence or common ground—when he bursts out that the product of Ray's labors is all too wonderful and must be shared: "This is too wonderful to keep to ourselves. You have to share."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more