The Natural Essay, Research Paper

The Natural, written by Bernard Malamud starts out with Roy, an aspiring baseball player on a train with his scout, Sam. Roy is still in his younger years, while Sam is an old scout who has slowed down over the years. On the train Sam notices that a well-known sportswriter, Max Mercy, is aboard, along with Walter Whambold, a superstar ball player, so he introduces Roy to them. Walter the Whammer Whambold is a cocky arrogant man who wants nothing to do with Roy or Sam. At one of the train stops, they have an hour to kill so Sam and Roy go to a local carnival, where Roy plays a game where you have to throw a baseball at a pyramid on three bottle. Of course Roy is great at this game, and draws the attention of Whammer, and Sam bets Whammer that Roy can strike out Whammer. Roy was very uncertain of Sam s wager, but goes along with it. The Whammer tries to take all of the confidence out of Roy, but after the first pitch that landed in Sam s catcher s mitt, he had all the confidence in the world. The next two pitches were much easier and he ended up striking the Whammer out.

The book takes a big time jump to where Roy is thirty-four years old and just getting on a pro team, the Knights. He gets made fun of his age and being a rookie, but he makes it through the though times and starts to live his dream.

Post modernism tries to convert the modern world, or unique individual, into a more standard whole . One fine example in The Natural is when the team is receiving a prayer and Roy storms out of the room halfway through it. He said he wasn t going to be hypnotized by some priest, and Pop s, the head coach yelled at him and told he that if he keeps walking, he ll never step foot on the field again. The coach, in a postmodern society is trying to unify the team instead of having everybody doing their own thing.