Parsing 思うことだって、できるはずだ


> そんな人生から開放される新たなチャンスだと思うことだって、できるはずだ。(『がばいばあちゃん』page 6, chapter 1)

I get the general sense of the sentence. It's saying you can liberate yourself
from _that_ kind of life. The って replaces という. The last part, I guess, could
be glossed as, 'That kind of thing [i.e. liberating yourself] has got to be
possible'. But I'm not sure how the 思うことだって... works exactly. My guess is it
comes from 思うことできる (It's possible to think) and the って highlights 思うこと, so
maybe you could translate it as,

> Such a thing as thinking there is a new chance to liberate yourself from
> such a life - it's got to be possible!

However, if that were the correct reading, I'm not sure what the だ in the だって
is doing exactly.

Maybe I hit upon the answer (or an important clue)? The main grammar point
used is ことできる (is possible). The だって probably means 'even'. So perhaps the
sentence could be parsed: "Even thinking there is a new chance of being
liberated from such a life - that's got to be possible." In the next sentence
the narrator says something about couples and families talking among
themselves about what kind of effort they should make into the future and how
this will get rid of the communication gap.




> そんな人生から開放される新たなチャンスだと思うことだって、できるはずだ。

「そんな人生から開放される新たなチャンスだ」と思うことだって、あなたはできるはずだ。

あなた may even be able to think that そんな人生から開放される新たなチャンスだ.

You may be able to think that it's a new chance which will release you from
such a (miserable) life.




I think your guess is right and the key is `思うことできる`. In fact, if you replace
`だって` with `が` or `は`, the meaning of the sentence becomes clearer IMO:

> XXXと思うことができるはずだ。  
>  thinking XXX should be possible [to you]

Putting back だって makes it into:

> XXXと思うことだってできるはずだ 。  
>  Even (such thing as) thinking XXX should be possible [to you]

On meanings of だって: [だって (datte)
meaning](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/5336/)

