Shoeless Joe

Ray's baseball field is a metaphor for a number of things: a second chance, a place of refuge for healing past hurts, for the restoration of lost dreams, and for providing new beginnings or opportunities. Is the baseball field symbolic of anything more than the things mentioned above?

The characters in Shoeless Joeexpress regret over the missed opportunities of their lives. The novel portrays the fundamental need of humans to reaffirm the feelings that were left unexpressed or not shared with others. Find evidence in the novel that supports or contradicts the above statement. 

Is Shoeless Joe a novel that is more about the will to believe that anything is possible by human effort and resilience, or the power of imagination to transcend reason, time, and even death?

Throughout the novel, the meaning attached to the game of baseball changes, according to the subjective experiences of the different characters in the book. Discuss the different meanings that are connected to the game of baseball as the novel progresses. How do they relate to the different themes of the book?

Baseball has a religious significance in Shoeless Joeand some of the characters in the novel act as faith healers. Taking religion as the context, what do you make of Kid Scisson’s speech (“the word is baseball”) towards the end of the novel?

Kinsella uses baseball to reveal eternal verities: men and women need to dream, to find things to cherish, to fall in love and share their desires, and finally to remind us that, in one way or another, we all die too soon. How does the writer's use of a baseball setting in the novel made apropos for such revelations?

Shoeless Joe is a story about the power of love and the power of dreams to bring that love to its conclusion. It’s about the courage to chase a dream and make that dream come true. Find evidence in the novel to support these statements.

Several characters in the novel Shoeless Joe are trying to escape the downward pull of everyday life by living their lives through dreams. Show how the novel reveals that dreams are a means of escape from the pull of reality in the lives of several of the characters.