Dec 31, 2009

The Natural | Summary

Part I: "Pre-game"
Bernard Malamud's novel, The Natural, follows the career of baseball player Roy Hobbs from his first false start to his final failure. The story is divided into two parts, the first recounting an event during Roy's nineteenth year, and the second picking up the story some fifteen years later. Although the first part is considerably shorter than the second, it is nonetheless just as important to the novel as a whole.

The Natural opens on a train hurtling eastward toward Chicago. We learn that Roy is travelling with his manager Sam for a...