The Natural | Roy Hobbs and Gawain in Gawain and the Green Knight
In the following essay, Henningfeld aligns the failure of main character Roy Hobbs with that of Gawain in Gawain and the Green Knight.
Bernard Malamud, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, published short stories in a variety of magazines during the 1940s and 1950s. He published his first novel, The Natural, in 1952. That Malamud chose to focus his first novel on baseball surprised and mystified his readers; even in his early short stories, Malamud had generally used Jewish characters, settings, and themes. The early reviews of The Natural illustrate the hesitation with which critics approached the novel. Many found the subject matter strange, the allegory strained, and the symbolism difficult.
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