Post 2 Shoeless Joe
“If you build it, He
will come.” Shoeless Joe is a book about a baseball loving man, named Ray
Kinsella, being told by a divine spirit to build a ball park in order for an
appearance from Shoeless Joe the famous baseball player who was supposedly
wrongfully banned from the game, including 7 other players. The book follows
Ray Kinsella as he travels around the country looking to redeem people who were
wrongfully banished from the game, such as a famous writer named Salinger.
Shoeless Joe, starts off a little strong, but it soon deteriorates, the
characters seem to have no emotion. When Ray first sees the ghost in the ball
park he has built and taken care of for a good amount of time and at a great
cost of money, he shows no excitement. He seems so sure of himself that the
voice he heard was not just a random voice, he expected Shoeless Joe to come
alive, even with such a vague wording like “If you build it, He will come.”
Also the plot takes unneeded turns like when Ray is eating at a diner and a man
with a gun comes in to threaten his ex. Things like this are really unneeded to
the plot and it’s not exciting or funny so why put it in, it’s just kind of
boring. The thing I do like about it is how closely you can relate to the main
character, he is just a guy who loves baseball with his Dad, it is his life and
he would do anything to redeem his cherished players that mean so much too him,
partly for him and for his father. Kinsella (the author) creates a really good
relationship with his family and it helps the story, showing how Ray’s wife
would do anything to please her husband. Some of the conversations are pretty
interesting and funny too. The fact that in order to get Salinger to attend a
baseball game he needed to kidnap him with a gun that was really just his
pointed finger in his trench coat. At the moment in my reading I give the book
a 6.5 out of 10 because of its lack of description and excitement, but it
creates good relationships between the characters in their shared love for
baseball.
