Shoeless Joe/Field of Dreams

The book that I decided to read is called “Shoeless Joe” and the movie is called “The Field of Dreams”. I usually don’t get into reading books and so forth but this one was about baseball so it interested me a whole lot. After each chapter, the author kept me waiting to see what was going to happen next. As I finished the book, I was excited and was awaiting the movie that I was about to watch. I expected that the movie would be totally different from the book for a few reasons.

The book had a totally different name than the movie, the way the author wrote made it seem impossible for a movie to be made just like it, and there were a number of events that I never thought could be put into a movie. The movie was mostly the same as the book except that there were a few major differences, a few things were added to the movie, and the emotion was different between the book and the movie. The movie only varied in a few different spots, but definitely very noticeable because they were huge differences instead of little tiny differences.

These differences made the movie way better than the book because it added way more tenderness and warmth to the story. In the book Ray Kinsella (the main character) is searching for an author by the name of J. D. Salinger (who wrote about two guys with the names of Ray and Richard Kinsella in two of his books). Mr. Salinger is a short and small white male. But in the movie the author’s name is Terrance Mann and he is an African American male that is about 250 pounds and about 6’5″ tall.

This difference was very surprising when you read the book expecting a white male and then you watch the movie and see a black man. I don’t know why the producers changed this but it made it more interesting and more realistic than the book. Also the movie differed by having the author’s house located in a different place than the books location. In the book the author lives in the hills outside of Boston, MA in a nice big house but in the book the author lives right in the middle of Boston in an old apartment building.

This change is even better because in the movie it shows how lonely and how he deserted himself from the rest of the world. These were only the huge differences between the book and the movie but I think that they were definitely better than what the book had portrayed. There was one thing that was added to the movie that made a huge impact on the outcome of things between the movie and the book. Ray Kinsella had a wife name Annie, she loved her husband so much that she told him “Oh, love, if it makes you happy you should do it.

Even though she wasn’t sure if his crazy ideas were always “financially” right, she still told him that same thing. She just wanted him to have his dreams come true. Anyway, the thing that the movie did better was showed her affection and love for him better because the producer added a certain scene. That scene is where Annie actually gets into a fight with another woman (that is noisy and is getting into Ray’s business and making fun of him building a baseball field). She sticks up for him and eventually gets the whole town to start believing Annie instead of this other woman in a town meeting.

This particular event is excellent because she is so excited for Ray and loves him too much to have people making fun of his dreams. The fight scene was definitely needed because it added integrity and personality to the plot. Emotion is a great thing to have in a book or a movie. Even though they both had emotion, I think that the book was lacking most of it. The book had emotion, “yes”, but the only emotion I saw was between Ray and Annie. Unlike the book, the movie was filled with emotion.

When Ray talks about his father in the movie you can tell that he misses him a lot but does not ever have any good memories with him. The movie shows that Ray and his father were not close at all but the only thing that they talked about was baseball. And at the end of the movie when Ray’s dad comes back from the dead to come play on his baseball field with him, Ray gets a smile on his face for the first time ever around his dad. The ending is just Ray and his father John Kinsella playing baseball catch for the first time ever.

This part is so emotional and very well placed. The book couldn’t have put it into this context. Your affection for the character turns into sorrow for the young Ray Kinsella because you can tell that he really misses his father and wishes that he had done this when he was little. The book couldn’t do this well because everyone that reads the words pictures something else. As the movie ended, I was left with happiness but also sadness as all his dreams came true but the emotion is what made me sad, which was very well done.

The differences between the movie and the book were very distinct and easy to realize what they were trying to accomplish. For a first time viewer of this movie and first time reader of this book, I found this story to be one of the best. It had no dull moments in either the book or the movie. As I wound down towards the end of each, I wished that there were more and more of it to continue. This movie and book blended so well together, almost as good as ketchup does with (my favorite) a corndog.