Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Natural, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ambition, Failure, and the American Dream
Baseball and American Vice
Mythology, Heroism, and Stardom
Femininity, Stereotypes, and Destruction
Summary
Analysis
A doctor at a maternity hospital with which Judge Banner has arranged a “money-saving contract” examines Hobbs, surprised by his scarred body. Unconscious, Hobbs experiences great pain and dizzying hallucinations; he returns to consciousness and is told by the specialist doctor that he can play in the Monday playoff against the Pirates, which will determine the second entrant in the World Series against the Yankees, but that after, he will not be able to play baseball again, since his fragile heart could give out. Hobbs is devastated, and he wonders if he might be able to prove the doctor wrong; he even sneaks out of the hospital to practice at Knights Field, but he collapses again and is sent back to the hospital.
Even faced with dire medical news, Hobbs is determined to prove his doctor wrong and lead the Knights to victory—perhaps at the cost of his own health and future. Thus ambition, to Hobbs, has become more important than any other quality in life, and his decline seems imminent. Moreover, it is ironic that Hobbs is treated at a maternity hospital, given his complicated relationship with maternal figures (Iris and his mother). Hobbs is “reborn” in the hospital, given a second chance at life, but he will quickly squander this opportunity in order to continue playing baseball.
Themes
Later, Hobbs dreams that he is searching for Sam Simpson in a snowstorm. Sitting at a table playing solitaire, Sam tells him vaguely, “Don’t do it,” and Hobbs swears that he “didn’t do it.” Sam orders him to take his advice, and Hobbs says he won’t, asking Sam if they can go “back home.” Sam says that they can’t, since it’s “snowin’ baseballs” outside.
Sam’s shaman-like presence in Hobbs’s dream alerts him that he will have to make a difficult moral decision. Additionally, Hobbs’s insistence that he “didn’t do it” suggests that he feels guilty about actions he has taken in the past: Hobbs is faced with a choice between continuing his immoral, dissolute lifestyle and making better-informed (but less ambitious) decisions.
Themes
When Hobbs comes to, he asks the specialist to promise not to tell anyone about his condition, and he sinks into a deep depression; he does not know how he will make a living without baseball, and he wonders how he might be able to satisfy Memo without any money. Memo enters his room as he is recovering, wearing a black dress, and complains that Pop has been terrible to her. She tells Hobbs that she wants “to get away” from her life. Hobbs asks Memo if she will marry him—promising that he will take care of her—and she tells him that she is afraid to be poor, since she is sick of living on her own and having to be frugal with her own money.
Hobbs sees his future crumbling before him, since he has never envisioned a life for himself without baseball; nonetheless, he still feels motivated to pursue Memo, even as it becomes abundantly clear that she is only after him for his fame and wealth (since she expresses no empathy for his weakened condition).
Themes
Hobbs tells Memo about his plan to quit baseball and invest in a business, but she says that she would rather have him invest in a large company, and that he needs more money to do so. Memo reveals that Judge Banner has sent her to Hobbs to ask him to agree to a deal: Banner wants Hobbs to “drop” the playoff, or purposefully lose it, so that Pop Fisher will be forced out of his job and Banner can take over the team (a player on the opposing team, working with Banner, will ensure that the team plays well against the Knights).
Memo’s true motives are finally revealed: she and Banner are working together to further their own greed-driven ambitions. Hobbs has been implicated in a corrupt system beyond his control, and he is forced to make a crucial decision—recalling the warning Hobbs received from Sam in his dream earlier.
Themes
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Banner later visits Hobbs and increases the amount of money he wants to offer him as a bribe. The Judge lectures Hobbs, relating a story in which he let a boy accused of a crime walk free, only to see the boy commit parricide (killing his father). He also tells Hobbs another story, in which a “paralytic” rose from his wheelchair in a court room to attack the physician who swindled him after the Judge gave him a lesser sentence. These stories demonstrate the folly of “moral” behavior, since the Judge’s efforts in both cases to act righteously were rendered moot. Some good, the Judge argues, might come out of Hobbs accepting the bribe.
Once again, the judge’s “moralizing” only serves to confirm his corrupt intentions and points to the irony of his position as a judge (a supposedly non-biased position). Banner seems to be arguing that his role as a mediator of justice is insignificant, since individuals in American society will act according to their own interests, no matter the punishment or consequences (as the individuals in his stories do). Thus, Banner implicitly affirms that baseball’s corruption is only a microcosm of a larger problem: American corruption in general, which the Judge portrays as inevitable and unavoidable.
Themes
Hobbs suddenly recalls a moment from his childhood when he wandered into the woods to find his lost dog, remembering the loneliness he felt. Before leaving, the Judge offers to increase Hobbs’s salary for the next season and threatens Hobbs by suggesting that Memo might leave him for Sands. Hobbs agrees to the deal. Hobbs reads Iris’s letter about her child and grandchild: she writes that her love for her child outweighed the difficulties she faced in becoming a young mother, but Hobbs is unmoved and throws the letter against the wall.
Pressured and anxious about accepting the bribe, Hobbs thinks again of his childhood: one last attempt to distance himself from the troubles of his present, in which his dreams seem to be moving further and further out of reach. Ultimately, Hobbs feels too attached to Memo (and worried that she might leave him), and he decides to choose her over Iris—and over his own moral compass.
Themes
