Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… with dreams of becoming a baseball player. Roy always knew that he was destined to play ball and was encouraged by his father to follow his passions. There have been a few setbacks, but Roy remains undaunted in his dream that, “someday, when people look at me they’ll say ‘there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was.’”
Living… his dream. After suffering a debilitating injury at nineteen, Roy has finally reached the major leagues. Now, at the ripe old age of thirty-five, Roy is finally able to use his talents for the New York Knights.
Profession… baseball player. Roy is a natural ballplayer who throws with grace, swings with power, and catches line-drives with ease. More than talent, however, Roy has passion. As he tells the Knights' coach, "Red, it took me sixteen years to get here. You play me, and I’ll give ya the best I got.”
Interests… baseball. Although he's a natural at the game, Roy has more than just talent on his side: Roy also has his supernaturally-powered bat, “Wonderboy,” which he made from a lightning-struck tree near his boyhood home.
Relationship Status… single, but not for lack of options. Now that he’s a famous ballplayer, Roy has all kinds of interesting, attractive women after him. Lately, the seductive Memo Paris has been catching his eye, though Roy's having a bit of difficulty forgetting his old sweetheart, Iris.
Challenge… carrying his team to the World Series. Roy only has one shot at helping the Knights win baseball’s highest prize, and he isn't having an easy time of it. Not only does he have to compete against the most skilled teams in the league, he has to face his own team’s nefarious owner, The Judge, who seems intent on throwing the Knights’ season.
Personality… honorable, tough, and resilient. Roy is a kind, humble man who always strives to do the right thing. Although his enemies may see think his integrity makes him easy to manipulate, time and time again, Roy's integrity proves to be one of his greatest strengths.
Get to Know him in...
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An unknown middle-aged batter named Roy Hobbs with a mysterious past appears out of nowhere to take a losing 1930s baseball team to the top of the league in this magical sports fantasy. With the aid of a bat cut from a lightning struck tree, Hobbs lives the fame he should have had earlier when, as a rising pitcher, he is inexplicably shot by a young woman.
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Introduction by Kevin Baker The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."
