The Human Hero: Arthurian Parallels and a Personal Quest in 'The Natural' Mack Hammond College

Being involved in a story or a moment of mythic proportions is one thing – being aware of it is another. In sport, significant moments often write themselves through the narrative of a game, where the victors are heroes, and the losers are forgotten. Bernard Malamud took it upon himself to weave a mythic narrative that revolves around baseball, and the ill-fated athlete Roy Hobbs, revealing this significance in sport. In his novel, The Natural, a heightened sense of historical importance is placed upon baseball, and these instances of heightened importance have lasting consequences for Hobbs.

Great importance is placed upon Roy Hobbs’s handcrafted bat, Wonderboy. In the story, the offensive tool that Hobbs is extremely faithful to is a reference to King Arthur’s sword from Arthurian legend, Excalibur. The bat is a parallel of it – a second coming of the sword through a literary novel about baseball. When the bat is introduced early in the novel, we immediately see it referred to as something mythic. Observing the bat’s storage device (a bassoon case), Eddie the porter asks Roy what the tune is today, to which Roy explains, “It ain’t a musical instrument”. Poking away at Roy, Eddie asks “A pogo stick... (a) Foolproof lance?” and...