Natural by Bernard Malamud

¶ … Natural, by Bernard Malamud [...] its importance in American baseball literature.

THE NATURAL

The Natural" was author Bernard Malamud's first book. In an interview, Malamud said he wrote it because "Baseball players were the 'heroes' of my American childhood. I wrote 'The Natural' as a tale of a mythological hero because...I became interested in myth and tried to use it, among other things, to symbolize and explicate an ethical dilemma of American life" (Interview 8).

Written in 1952, the novel recounts the story of Roy Hobbs, an over-the-hill pitcher turned batter who just wants a chance in the major leagues. "Roy Hobbs, the protagonist, is a baseball player who wants to be the best. He does achieve success, but he abandons the people who mean most to him as he furthers his own career" (Field). Malamud intertwined his love of baseball with a classic "quest" tale, loosely based on the Holy Grail quests of old. "In 'The Natural,' the characters are mythic at both levels: the literal story of the baseball season and the archetypal level of the Grail myth" (Understanding 153). Roy want to be the best in baseball, and his quest carries him to the top of the baseball world at the expense of those around him, so when he falls, as he must, he has no one there to catch him.

In brief, Malamud transforms the national game of baseball, familiar to all and in which all are experts, into a contest among demigods and conducted as though it were a sacred ritual in a cosmic arena. This placing together of unlike pairs, baseball and the universe, already inspires a comic response. For the literary reader Malamud provides an extra dimension of incongruity by juxtaposing a sports story, rendered with the appropriate data and terminology, against a mythic context which draws upon the myths of the Quest Hero, the Fisher King, and, to some degree, the White Goddess.... (Grebstein 20).

Roy is a 'natural' in the baseball sense of having outstanding natural abilities for the game, but the title is also ironic since 'natural' was the medieval term for a fool, particularly an unworldly innocent. His name carries on this duality" (Dictionary). In the beginning of the novel, Roy is a young and innocent 19-year-old on his way to play with the Chicago Cubs, but a mysterious woman shoots him in a hotel room, and he cannot play. The next time we see him is fifteen years later, and he has not lost his ambition and desire to play professional baseball.

Malamud's hero comes from the Far West rather than from the slums of Baltimore or the sidewalks of New York. When he arrives in the city, the grass of the outfield turns green and he "romped in it like a happy calf in its pasture"(Malamud 66). The pastoral elements are heightened to myth. Roy's magic bat, Wonderboy, is also his "foolproof lance" (Malamud 9), with which he terrorizes luckless pitchers (Fisher 246).

However, he is not the young and innocent man who existed at the beginning of the novel. "Like many other Malamud heroes, Roy struggles to escape his past while he attempts to find a "new life of comfort and fulfillment" (Hershinow 165).

As the novel progresses, Roy gets his chance to play baseball with a down-and-out team, the New York Knights, which is another reference in the book to the quest for the Grail. "Over the course of the season Roy gets involved with Pop's lovely niece, Memo, and her friend, the gambler Gus Sands. Eventually his desire for Memo, and his need for sufficient money to keep her in the style she desires, once again leads him astray from his quest" (Editors). He agrees to throw a game, and his miraculous bat, "Wonderboy," that he has carried with him since the beginning of his quest, shatters in his last game, ruining the Knight's chances, and his own to continue playing America's game. He is destroyed, because he has not only failed in his quest, he has failed those that believed in him. "Roy does somehow deserve to be destroyed for not honoring the natural talent he has been blessed with" (Editors).

Many critics have called "The Natural" the best baseball book of all time. Malamud combines his love of baseball with the mythical and dark sides of human nature, showing a seedy side of the game not usually recognized by writers. In his quest for perfection in the game, Roy becomes a mythical character and even a magician when he brings rain to the dried up home field of the Knights. "Hobbs brings rain to the parched land and an end to the team's slump. The first time he comes to bat, a tremendous noise cracks the sky and 'a few drops of rain spattered to the ground' (Malamud 63)" (Fisher 247). Malamud shows the dark side of human nature, and the dark side of team sports at the same time. The competition in modern team sports is so great; it can cause the downfall of a man or a team too weak to stand up to the pressure. Roy is ultimately weak, and while he is a great baseball player, he is not a great man, and in the end, that is what really matters in team sports, and in life.