The Natural
The Natural“The Natural”
By: Bernard Malamud
The Natural, a story bases on a man by the name of Roy Hobbs. This story reminds me of a book I once read a little while ago. Roy Hobbs is (to me) a King Arthur. Iris is his Guenevere- in this story and then the rest of the characters are like those from the story.
Roy Hobbs plays the Arthur figure. Roy is a country boy, innocent of the temptations of the urban jungle that is already taking over American life in the period between the world wars. His ability as a baseball player is as innate as his essential goodness. Like a king over a country, he is born with the power to rule over the baseball field. Yet his father warns him, immediately prior to his early death (By, rather than within, a large tree) that he can’t rely solely on his gift alone, or he will fail. Only a couple chapters into the book this seems to have come true, as Harriet Bird, lover of veteran baseball star the Whammer, shoots Roy down with a silver bullet.
The evening before Harriet injures Roy; she asks him, in a restaurant car, whether he has read Homer. The authors are not just drawing on the Matter of Britain for their archetypes. The manager and co-owner of the team Roy eventually rises to prominence with, the New York Knights may be called Pop Fisher. He may warn Roy, momentarily changing role models, that he should not begin a relationship with the...
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