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Genre 

Sports novel; myth; tragedy

Narrator 

An anonymous third person omniscient narrator

Point of View 

The narration always focuses on Roy Hobbs's perspective

Tone 

The tone of the novel is one of the traditional baseball yarn, so it is written in a rough New York vernacular language (for instance, Pop Fisher's head is described at various times as both a baldy and a bean)

Tense 

Past

Setting (time) 

1950s

Setting (place) 

New York City

Protagonist(s) 

Roy Hobbs

Major Conflict 

Roy Hobbs, at the age of thirty-four, has achieved his dream of being a superstar baseball player, but his inability to control his appetites (for food, women, and wealth) threatens to undermine his performance and cost his team the pennant

Rising Action 

Roy's leadership of his team into a pennant race; Roy's infatuation with Memo Paris; Roy's liaison with Iris Lemon

Climax 

Roy's strikeout in his last professional at-bat

Falling Action 

Roy's beating of the Judge and Gus Sands; Roy's discovery that Max Mercy has ruined him

Foreshadowing 

There is much foreshadowing in The Natural, the most obvious of which is perhaps the young Roy's striking out of the Whammer—an event that repeats itself at the end of the novel, when Youngberry strikes out Roy.

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