T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

appropriate to our predicament. It is thls which gives to his(Malamud's) work special authority and special richnessn .(fiedler 1963,105)ZTls NaturaL 1s divided into two parts- "Pre-game" and"Better-up". The first part presents the misfortunes andinherent weaknesses of Roy which are expanded in the secondpart. Sidney Richman finds in this first part " the mythicformula of Initiation, Seperation and Return". (1968,41) ROYbeglns hls career by outpitching the reignlng champion, theWhammer. But at the end he is outpitched by a young boy freshfrom the country, Herman Younyberry. The fertility cycle isthus renewed. Seen in this context hlstory becomes myth. Therltual of burying the broken bat 'Wonderb~y' marks the end ofRoy's career. Unable to stand the slqht of a broken bat, heties the pieces with his shoe laces before the burial. It is asthough Roy were plecing together his dlslnteyrated self. In theend Roy ylelds himself to the young player, Youngberry whobecomes hrs 'mythical son'. Malamud sees baseball history as"the distillation of American llfe". He used real events toavclc contrivance and to reveal baseball as the ritual forexpressing American life and its predicament. The myth of thebaseball here ;nThe Natural is an amalgam of the heroic mythand ~ t s democratic offsprlng, the HOrOfia Alger story. RoyHobbs is a failed hero because he cannot act within a mythology