The Natural Themes

Ah, the American Dream. Rising up from humble beginnings to fame, fortune, and happiness. That's what they tell us anyway. But Bernard Malamud tells a different story in The Natural. This baseball...

A few decades before Gordon Gekko would tell us that "Greed is good," Bernard Malamud was telling us that it doesn't always work out so great to be ambitious. Everybody has a racket in the novel: b...

If there is ever a place where destiny meets will, it's on the baseball field. Or basketball court. Or in the mud-wrestling pit. So many different factors can influence the outcome of a sports cont...

Rabbit's foot? Check. Lucky penny? Check. Special undies? Check. Evil eye necklace? Check. Now we're ready to play baseball. Bernard Malamud's The Natural uncovers all the wild superstitions that l...

The baseball field is a great place to contemplate right and wrong, temptation and resistance. The combination of ambition, poverty, and limited time (no one's getting any younger!) make the player...

Things can get competitive in competitive baseball, and while there's supposedly no crying in that particular sport, there's a lot of jealousy. In The Natural jealousy is one of Roy's major motivat...

The Natural refers to a guy who's a natural talent at baseball. So you shouldn't be surprised that strength and skill are major themes in the novel. In fact, the loss of strength and skill is one o...

The fear of being poor makes some people do things they're not proud of. Memo's the most direct about it. She's terrified of a life where she can't have the things that she wants. And she wants som...