"The Natural'

Analytical Essay # 3479

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Literature > American

"The Natural'

An analysis of Bernard Malamud's novel, "The Natural".

1,200 words () | 1 source | 2001 United States

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Paper Summary:

An analysis of Bernard Malamud's novel "The Natural". The author examines the themes and characters in the book with focus on the author's use of symbolism and language. The author describes the main character as a baseball player and his bat represents a sword. The relationship the boy has with his bat is compared to the relationship that a knight has with his sword.

From the Paper:

"Bernard Malamud's novel The Natural is both a relatively simple story -- about a semi-pro baseball player who begs a scout to help him make it in the all-American game of baseball -- and a complex literary exercise in the use of simple, concise symbols to convey in as efficient a way as possible entire universes of meaning. This paper examines one of the most important and pervasive symbols in this 1952 work -- the bat that Roy uses and that serves as a symbolic lance. "