"The Natural" as a Road to God?

The Natural never found a comfortable place in my mind as I read it and I am still not able to envisage it in my understanding of religion. Setting out to read the novel I first glanced at Kevin Baker’s “Introduction” and was immediately drawn to the word antiheroic. It was a term not often associated with religious heroes. Heroes are always revealed in a glorious light—David defeated Goliath, Moses saved the Israelites—but rarely do we witness their shortcomings. Again, I am forced to rely on a rapidly fading understanding of Catholicism, though, I am sure that the religious characters I grew up with were people to emulate in all ways. How then could the antiheroic, callous, self-absorbed Roy Hobbs ever guide someone in a religious direction? One could argue that characters with flaws can be learned from, but why then would Bernard Malamud spend an entire novel on such a reprehensible person—terrible characters with lessons to teach are for fables not for works with the magnitude of The Natural.

I spent the first half of the novel grappling with the idea of Roy Hobbs as hero; it was a constant comparison with Jesus, one I regret spending half the work doing. I was, however, compelled to continue reading. Roy intrigued me. He was real and flawed like I am and everyone else is. It didn’t take long to understand his plight or a least understand its genesis. Unlike most epic heroes (ones that I don’t necessarily think are religious) Roy’s flaws were numerous. He would womanize, be uncaring towards his teammates, and act in a completely self-absorbed manner and I understood it. No, I found it believable.

As I read The Iowa Baseball Confederacy I allowed myself to get swept away in the mythology Kinsella created. When it was completed, however, I walked away from the novel thinking only “what a lovely story”. I have trouble believing in magic and mystique of religion—it’s always been a problem and I don’t foresee it going away. Malamud created a world that appeared authentic. Roy’s internal struggle, the gambling underworld, these were parts of a reality I knew existed.

This posed a question in my mind: If I believed in Roy what exactly were beliefs? The simple answer is that beliefs are declarations we make internally to explain the unexplainable. Why, if as human’s we have the capacity to believe in things that rely on faith, did I find Roy’s quagmire to be more important. Eliade divided the world for me into two very distinct categories, the sacred and the profane—I am not trying to discredit a sacred existence, but the profane for me seems to coincide with a world based on quantifiable truths. Roy is the “Patron Saint of the Profane” in my mind. His skill is his own, not God given, and like Eliade mentioned Roy does incorporate a fragment of the sacred with “Wonderboy”.

Is Malamud’s final lesson that the profane ends with failure and tragedy? I don’t think so. Roy succumbed to the temptation of mortal goods—this works because it is most often true with man. Perhaps Malamud subconsciously suggest that there is no afterlife following a profane existence with Roy’s eventual ban from baseball—I imagine he was trying to create the cast of a realistic man to explain the everyday, not as a cautionary tale but as mirror to any that might find some sort of truth in Roy. I am one to agree with the notion “misery loves company” but that is such morbid way of putting it. I suggest any individual finds solace in the like.