Daily Dialogue — August 10, 2019

Pop Fisher: You know my mama wanted me to be a farmer.
Roy Hobbs: My dad wanted me to be a baseball player.
Pop Fisher: Well, you’re better than any player I ever had. And you’re the best God damn hitter I ever saw. Suit up.

— The Natural (1984), screenplay by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry, novel by Bernard Malamud

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Baseball. Today’s suggestion by @johnnysega.

Trivia: While the story is an adaptation of the book by Bernard Malamud, the plot has been changed for movie to be more “uplifting”. Several characters and symbols are heavily influenced by the writings of Homer and Greek mythology: — the line, “Have you ever read Homer?” Roy Hobbs = Odysseus. He is trying to “find his way” (home). Max Mercy = Vulcan, God of Fire and Forging. He can “make or break you”, and is always seen in red or brown clothing. Pop Fisher = Zeus, King of the Gods. His uniform is #1, and both the oak tree and lightning bolt à la the Wonderboy bat, are his symbols. The Judge = Hades, God of the Underworld. He is always in the dark, a.k.a. death, and the dead are “judged” in the underworld. Memo Paris = Kalypso, a sea nymph who had an affair with Odysseus and held or distracted him from returning home. Kalypso means “I will conceal” in Greek. Gus Sands = the Cyclops. Gus has the one strange eye. Iris Gaines = Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Roy’s true love, from whom he was separated for sixteen years, while she raised their son. — Hubris = when Roy states his goal is for people to say, “there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game”, this is what the Greeks considered to be hubris, and for that, a person would often suffer turmoil.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The surprise return of Roy Hobbs before the pivotal game.