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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."

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