THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY IN

BERNARD MALAMUD’S “THE NATURAL”

D. LAKSHMANA RAO, M. A., Ph. D.

A survey of American fiction written since the Second World War reveals most of the protagonists of the novels searching for a sense of identity and selfhood. The forces making for the anonymity of man in an industrialized society like America, and the tensions to which minority groups like Jewish-Americans are subject, lend poignancy to this theme in contemporary American fiction. It figures prominently in the fiction of the Jewish-American novelists of the last three decades, especially in the work of Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud.

The Natural¹ is the first of Malamud’s novels and is about the attempts of a talented baseball player, named Roy Hobbs, to win recognition and wealth. The novel is divided into two parts, each tracing a broadly similar pattern of events in the career of the hero. In the earlier part entitled “Pre-Game,” Roy is an adolescent being taken for a “try-out” in baseball to Chicago. In this part there are two crucial situations which indicate the chief weaknesses and virtues of the protagonist. These are his defeating Walter Wambold, the reigning baseball hero, and his succumbing to the physical beauty of a mysterious young woman named Harriet Bird, who happens to travel by the same train. The former incident indicates his heroic potential, while his sensual response to Harriet indicates his sensuality.

The chief features of Roy’s character emerge fairly clearly by the end of the first part. These are his potential for heroism, and, coexistent with it, a self-centredness which constricts and distorts his ideals, and thwarts his quest. Through the second and larger part, we see Roy battling against the negative side of his self. The moral condition of Roy at the beginning is symbolized by his reflection in the window-pane of the train to Chicago. We see his face reflected in the light of the lighted match, surrounded by darkness.

At the beginning, Roy’s vision of heroism and identity is inadequate, and his ambitions petty. He longs for the pleasures of the flesh, and seeks to be “the best there ever was in the game” (p. 32). At the end of the first part, Roy is shot and wounded by Harriet Bird for his overweening ambition, on the night before the “try-out” match. His baseball career is ended even before making a real start.

The second part called “Batter Up!” takes up the narrative after a lapse of fifteen years, and depicts the hero’s renewed quest for identity.

II

Roy meets with better luck at the beginning of the second part than he had enjoyed so far. His talent is spotted and he joins a team named ‘The Knights’ headed by a retired baseball player named Fisher. But his career is a pattern of alternate triumphs and reverses. On each of these occasions, Roy confronts either himself or “Pop Fisher,” and each is an opportunity for acquiring self-knowledge which in turn defines his identity. It is an indication of Roy’s immaturity that he fails to recognize and grasp these opportunities.

The first indication of Roy’s integrity and self-confidence is his refusal to submit himself along with the others to the hypnotic treatment of Dr Knobb. But his victory in this confrontation unfortunately finds expression in the inflation of his ego. This situation brings to light another aspect of Roy’s quest–his rebellion against a father-figure. In each of the two parts, we see two father-figures in relation to the hero–one authoritarian and the other benign. He rebels against the authoritarian figure, but succeeds in killing, at least figuratively, the benign figure.

The primary requirement for Roy to achieve his objective is relinquishing his alienating ego and cultivating a viable; relationship with the world. But Roy’s passionate longing for Pop Fisher’s niece Memo Paris prevents him from doing this. Because of his insistent sensuality and egoism, his baseball achievements do not aid his quest.

Roy’s quest for personal identity is obstructed by his identification of sex with love. Besides, he resists, growth and the responsibilities of adult life. This unconscious resistance retards his quest. The former is dramatized in his smashing the clock at Ebbetsfield stadium with one of his hits. He wishes to attain immortality in baseball by establishing all-time records in the game. This search for immortality has elements of both solipsism and search for integration. Roy appears to be searching for What Mr. Greiff has called “some lost unity within the self”.² This search for identity impels him to try to repudiate his past and recreate himself with a new identity. Roy does everything to deny his past short of changing his name.

Roy’s quest for love should have aided his quest for identity as his capacity to love somebody makes a man of him, and thus gives him identity. But his choice of the wrong woman vitiates and obstructs this quest. He recognizes the pernicious influence of his association with Memo on his playing ability, yet perversely continues to long for her love.

With the passage of time, Roy progresses toward his goal of popularity, and the players and spectators recognize him for what he is–a “natural” to the game. We feel a sense of waste when we perceive that Roy can use his talent only for boosting his ego, while he could have redeemed his own as well as Pop Fisher’s failures with it. But his sense of insecurity and his impatience to establish himself as a hero prevent him from effecting the necessary curtailment of his ego. Luckily for Roy, his rival Baily, in an attempt to match Roy’s performance, accidentally hits himself against a wall and is killed. The way is now clear for Roy to achieve fame in baseball. Baily’s exit has removed from the scene Roy’s chief rival for the love of Memo and has made his path smoother.

But Baily’s exit is only a small gain for Roy. His progress, is still held up by his inability to comprehend his past. He is haunted by the past he wishes to bury, as the spectators still measure his performance by that of the now-dead “Bump” Baily. But Roy persists until Baily is forgotten, and he is recognized in his own right.

Roy continues to grow in popularity without, however; any corresponding broadening of his conception of identity. The Roy Hobbs Day his admirers give him evinces from him only the egoistic declaration that he wishes “to be the best there ever was in the game” (p. 108). We also notice the persistence of his purely physical view of love. Despite unmistakable indications of her unnaturality, Roy desires Memo. It is thus clear that he is yet immature.

Roy’s psychic need for wholeness drives him to seek ever new victories in baseball. He wishes to project himself as a titanic hero. For Roy, as for Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, the possession of wealth and the love of the chosen woman are tangible symbols of identity. Both choose a corrupt woman as the object of an intrinsically noble passion, and are ultimately destroyed by the pursuit of the corrupt object.

Roy has to encounter and triumph over evil before he can reach his goal. He encounters evil in the guise of Memo and her mentor, the unscrupulous Judge Banner. He moves toward this confrontation by gradual stages. But his negative attitude to the past still hinders his quest.

Roy’s stature in the game is now recognized by the spectators, who now become curious about his past. But Roy conceals his past from everybody, especially from the prying journalist Max Mercy. This denial of his past makes him blind to the similarities between Memo and Harriet Bird, and renders him incapable of learning the lessons of the past. Roy’s suffering is thus wasted. His infatuation with Memo prevents him from perceiving that she is inimical to the values of innocence and identity he cherishes.

Roy is offered an opportunity to redeem himself when he meets Irish Lemon. She is hit in the eye when Roy hits the ball into the stands. Roy makes her acquaintance in the subsequent commotion. Iris, like Roy, had suffered, but did not let her suffering embitter her life. She has a balanced view of life, death, and suffering, which Roy too must cultivate before he can attain his goal of an identity. She is as Mr. Greiff notes, the combination of Eros and Thanatos, and if only Roy can appreciate the fact, her companionship could be most fruitful to Roy’s quest. An altruistic phase in his career begins with his meeting her. He now visualizes a social purpose for his abilities, but is as yet incapable of the self-discipline necessary to subordinate his ego to the interest of the team as a whole.

Roy’s encounter with Iris Lemon effects a qualitative change in his personality. He becomes capable of social commitment and of using his talent for the benefit of others. At a time when his performance is at the worst, he is requested by the father of a desperately sick young fan to hit a “homer” and save the life of the boy. He feels quite incapable of keeping such a promise, knowing that the boy would be listening to the commentary on the game. Yet, to save the life of the boy, he promises to try to hit a homer. This release from altruism enables Roy to hit the life-saving homer. At the moment of hitting the homer, he has an insight into the true nature of Memo. Despite this, however, he continues to adopt a negative view of suffering, and seeks to evade it. This attitude of mind renders him incapable of appreciating the truth of Iris Lemon’s advice that suffering makes good people better and “brings us toward happiness.” (p. 149)

Following his meeting with Iris, Roy perceives her potential to help him achieve the wholeness he seeks. In her presence, he is free from the tension he normally feels. Moreover, he undergoes a symbolic rebirth during a swim in a lake in her company. Hurt by her rejection of his amorous advances, he plunges to the bottom of the lake, touches the mud at the bottom, and returns to the surface. For the first time, he experiences a sense of wholeness when she sleeps with him after the swim.

But the beneficent influence of Iris on Roy’s personality is short-lived. Immediately afterwards, he reverts to his self-centredness. He lusts for fame and Memo. He is momentarily attracted to Iris, but rejects her on learning that she is, despite her youth, a grand-mother. In fact, Iris who embodies both innocence and experience, is the ideal adjunct to Roy’s quest. In rejecting her, he loses an opportunity of achieving integration and identity. In fact, we feel that Roy’s most serious failure is his rejection of her. He meets in her an individual who, like himself, had erred and suffered, but had learned from her suffering to create a new self by willingly sacrificing something to uphold the worth of another individual.

The impact of Iris’s personality on Roy’s is reflected in the broadening of his vision of self and identity. He is now less selfish and more altruistic. His performance in the game improves greatly, and he enters on one of the most glorious periods of his career. But he is yet to develop a positive attitude to his past and to suffering. On his return to the game, he is still lusting for Memo, though he is now aware of her association with such nefarious characters as Judge Banner, the book-maker Gus Sands and Max Mercy. His pent-up longing for Memo finds outlet in an unnatural, insatiable hunger which drives him to overeating. The culmination of this is a tragi-comic scene in which, at the moment of his long-awaited union with Memo on the night before the crucial match, he is brought down with a monstrous stomach-ache. He is taken to a nearby hospital where the doctors use the stomach pump and “dredged up unbelievable quantities of bilge.” (p. 180)

At this juncture, a survey of Roy’s achievements and prospects looks very bleak. He has not completed even one season in the game despite his thirty-three years. He has not yet succeeded either in love or in the game. The doctors predict that this may be his last season in the game, and that he might be able to play the last game in the series only with some difficulty. Thus what he had thought was the start of a glorious baseball career has turned out to be a spell of evanescent glory.

Roy has the crucial confrontation with Evil when he is recovering in the hospital, brooding on the bleak prospect before him. During this moment when he is psychologically vulnerable, he receives an offer of $ 35,000 from the unscrupulous Judge Banner for betraying his team. With diabolic calculation, the Judge conveys the offer to Roy through Memo Paris. At first, Roy is shocked at the depravity of the Judge in betraying the team of which he is the chief financial supporter. He rejects the offer in indignation and utter disgust. But the Judge’s suggestion that he may lose Memo for want of money, and his own unabated desire for Memo persuade Roy to accept the offer. In order to have at least money and Memo if he cannot go down in baseball history as one of the immortals, Roy accepts the offer of $ 35,000 for not hitting any ball “safely.”

Roy’s act of self-betrayal is the result of the impingement of the corrupt world on his essentially Adamic nature. The evil trio of Memo, Gus Sands and Judge Banner, with their insistence on the supremacy of money in their scheme of values, succeed in corrupting him. But he is saved once again before it is too late, again through the agency of Iris Lemon. When he sees her in the stands, he is freed from moral turpitude, and makes a last-minute attempt to assert his better self.

This last match, which is “a microscopic compression of the entire novel”,³ brings into focus Roy’s desperate struggle to overcome the self-destructive impulses which imperil his quest. This significant change in his attitude is reinforced by the note he receives from Iris informing him that she carries his child. This situation highlights Roy’s approach to maturity. This time, the intimation of his impending fatherhood is not followed by his former aversion to children. He joyously accepts the child to be born, and thus has emerged victorious in the “trial by love” ⁴ to which the Malamud hero must submit before he can attain identity. This change in him is a milestone in his progress towards his goal of identity.

This significant change in Roy is accompanied by a further re-orientation of his attitudes to the world. During the game, he observes Memo watching the game from the Judge’s tower along with him. He now conceives an “odd disgust for Memo” (p. 210), and mentally reexamines the implications of his pact with the Judge. Finally, he decides to repudiate the immoral bargain, though he has no opportunity to communicate his decision to the Judge. This spiritual rebirth gives him a sense of wholeness and identity as an individual.

Roy’s spiritual awakening comes too late to enable him to retrace his steps, but this does not invalidate his spiritual rebirth. In his despair, he strikes himself out, and the Knights lose the match. He now understands the truth of Iris’s words about the capacity of suffering to bring us toward happiness–a state of equilibrium between the self and the outside world. That he does not actually succeed in foiling Judge’s plan does not hide his spiritual transformation. It only emphasizes the difficulty of attaining and maintaining moral integrity in this world.

The death or Roy’s egoistic self is dramatized by the breaking of his self-made bat Wonderboy towards the end of the match. This change is further emphasized by Roy’s action at the end in going to the Judge’s tower and showering the thousand dollar bills (his reward for supposedly having betrayed his team and his dream) on the old man’s head. At the same moment he also finally rejects Memo. This completes the process of his achieving identity as a moral agent.

At the end, Roy is left only with the satisfaction of having acquired self-knowledge, and possessing a chastened self. He is now a changed man. He is now free from the illusions regarding the nature of love and money, and has won the love of Iris to compensate for the loss of Memo. His love is now productive, for he is about to become a father.

In the final pages of the novel, Roy’s predicament assumes universal significance. His corruption is the result of the contradiction in American culture which prompts Americans to resent corruption in sport and yet makes them bet on the outcome of games, which is bound to have a corrupting influence on sportsmen. Roy is the victim of the American ambivalence which demands heroes in arts and sports, and pillories them when it discovers their fallibility.⁵ Roy proves unable to resist the pleasures of the flesh which ordinary people enjoy, but are denied to him.

In a final assessment, we can say that there is a remarkable development in Roy’s personality. Out of his confrontation with evil, he emerges not with the primal innocence he had sought, but with a “more durable innocence” ⁶ tempered by his contact with evil. He now adopts a more balanced attitude to his past, and has overcome his distaste for children. His acceptance of the past is implicit in his regret at having betrayed Pop Fisher, who had hoped for so much from him. In accepting Iris, Roy makes a qualified affirmation of love.

The achievement of identity by Roy Hobbs is defined by these conspicuous changes in his personality. But it must be recognized that the new identity he achieves is only incipient. He has made a definite break with the past, rejected one set of values in favour of a more positive one. As a conscious and independent moral agent, he rejects the pursuit of money and sex as tangible symbols of identity; in their place, he chooses love and suffering. At the end, he has achieved a new identity and has started a new life,”–the theme and title of one of Malamud’s later novels.

¹ References are to the Penguin Books Edition (1967) of this novel. Quotations are identified by page numbers given in parentheses after the quotation.

² Greiff, Louis K. “Quest and Defeat in The Natural” Thoth VIII, p. 23.

³ Greiff op. cit. p. 33.

⁴ Richman, S. Bernard Malamud. Popular Prakashan, Bombay (1969) p. 33.

⁵ Baumbach, J.: The Landscape of Nightmare (1965). New York. New York University Press. p. 102.

⁶ Lewis, R. W. B.: The American Adam (1955), Chicago. University of Chicago Press. p. 146.

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