Archetype and Irony
In The Natural
Ronald K. Giles
In May 14, 1944, Time review, “Swinging
for the fences,” Richard Schickel says that
That Natural “is an American myth, Bub,
and don’t you forget it,” but there is more
than just an American myth at work in this
movie. Universal archetypes are there as
well, often integrated into the ironic spirit of
the film. And the teacher can easily use this
film to show how archetypes and irony
make their appeal to a serious audience,
without in any way making the film less
entertaining.
The “American Dream” constitutes
the movie’s mythic foreground: the country
boy leaves the farm on an interrupted
journey toward success as a major league
baseball player. Even his plebian name, Roy
Hobbs, suggests his common origin, as do
the names of other heroes coming out of
traditional myth and lore, such as Paul
Bunyan and John Henry. And, of course,
baseball is the natural pastime- itself a
metaphor, as in E.B. White’s well-known
definition: “Democracy is the score at the
beginning of the ninth.”
But the mythic component of the
film extends far beyond the ideas and
images which form the strictly American
grain in our common culture. For example,
one finds throughout the movie the recurring
presence of water symbolism, water being
often associated with creation, fertility, or
the mystery of origin. At significant
moments in the movie, the rain begins to
fall in the background, as when, talking with
sportswriter Max Mercy, Roy Hobbs stands
in front of a downpour at the tunnel to the
stadium and refuses to reveal his mysterious
history. Dramatic irony supports the scene,
for the audience knows what Mercy has
forgotten: sixteen years before Mercy had
umpired, and lost a wager on, a carnival lot
confrontation between “The Whammer” and
the young Roy Hobbs.
Analyzing Bernard Malamud’s novel
in Laurel and Thorn (Lexington: University
of Kentucky press, 1981), Jack Higgs
comments on the character which Robert
Duvall plays in the movie: “For Roy Hobbs,
Max Mercy has minimum mercy. Motivated
no doubt by jealousy, Mercy tries to do Roy
in by the surest way of wrecking heroes and
non-heroes alike: by revealing their past”
(130). Thus the verbal irony of Mercy’s
name supports, in turn, the dramatic force of
their several contentious meetings.
Water also forms the backdrop when
Memo Paris attempts to learn about Hobbs’
past as they stand next to the pier with the
sea behind them. The sea is the primordial
symbol for genesis and its enigmatic quality.
But, when Hobbs does reveal his past to Iris,
they are seen walking along the street in a
play of light and shadow corresponding to
the muffled dialogue.
The women in the movie have an
archetypal aura as well. Barbara Hershey
plays a femme fatale, a “terrible mother”
type who veils herself in symbolic black
(evil, mystery, death) before pulling the
trigger. Here the deceptive tension between
appearance and reality constitutes romantic
irony, because there is a sudden change of
tone: the insidious illusion of beautiful siren
(who once told Hobbs that Homer “wrote
about heroes and gods”) turns rapidly and
unexpectedly ugly.
On the other hand, there is a “good
mother” type, dressed in white (light, purity,
life), who provides the spiritual nourishment
which Hobbs needs in order to break out of
his slump. Played by Glenn Close, she is
named Iris, suggesting that Greek goddess
of the rainbow, another symbol of hope and
promise. Once again, an ironic contrast
heightens the dramatic effect because Iris,
at this point, is the foil whose presence
underscores the detrimental influence of
Memo, and influence to which Hobbs has
been blind but over which he must rise, in
both a moral and a physical sense.
Contrasting “father figures” give an
archetypal balance to the movies symbolic
structure. On the evil side there is the
corrupt judge who schemes to seize
complete ownership of the team. Mythic
critics would call him, in Jungian terms, the
“shadow”-the dark side of the human
personality-appropriately symbolized in the
movie by the dark office in which he prefers
to sit. Situational irony supports the plot at
this point because, in order to acquire the
remaining shares in the team, the judge must
insure that the Knights lose, rather than win,
the pennant.
The antiethical figure is the team
manager, “Pop” Fisher-a name suggesting in
mythic terms both “the wise old man” and
the Fisher King, the wounded ruler who
must be healed by questing knight. (For
further explanation, see Jessie L. Weston’s
from Ritual to Romance , 1920). “Pop” owns
the other shares in the team, a circumstance
of plot which makes the judge not only his
symbolic but also his literal antagonist.
“Pop” is an appropriate sobriquet because he
becomes, in effect, a surrogate father for the
hero, and Pop’s wisdom is most evident
when he warns Hobbs against a romantic
infatuation with Memo. But once again
irony supports the mythic dimensions
because, thinking him too old to help the
team, Pop himself is not wise enough to put
Hobbs in the lineup immediately.
Through he is the American hero,
Roy Hobbs resembles the mythic
“deliverer.” He is on the quest to be, as he
says, “the best there ever was.” On his
journey toward that goal, he must overcome
Memo’s bewitching charms, defeat the
villains, save the team, and win the lady in
white. So complete a hero would have to be,
in Cheucer’s language, “a verray, parfit
gentil knight”-and, by movie’s end, he is
perfect, archetypally labeled by the number
9 on his uniform, a symbolically perfect of
the perfect triad by itself (Christopher
Butler, Number Symbolism. London:
Routledge and Kegan, 1970, p. 34).
The time is 1939; the mode is
romance, which Northrup Frye calls the
“Mythos of Summer,” and the last phase of
which “marks the end of a movement from
active to contemplative adventure . . . .
associated with . . . warm and cosy spots”
(Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: University
of Princeton Press, 1957, p. 202). In the
movie, the closing scene not only recalls the
opening one but also scales down the action
and relocates Roy and Iris, his archetypal
“soul-mate,” in an idyllic setting where the
cycle may begin anew.