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Mythological and Archetypal Elements in the Natural

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Mythological and Archetypal elements are expressed in many ways in The Natural. The characters of Roy Hobbs and Pop Fisher are both based on the mythology of Sir Perceval and the Holy Grail. Filmmakers of The Natural also demonstrated mythological and archetypal elements with most of the shots in the film.
The character of Roy Hobbs can be seen as Sir Perceval, one of the Knights of the Round Table. The most obvious example of this is that Sir Perceval was a knight of the Round Table and Roy Hobbs plays for the New York Knights. In the legend of Sir Perceval, he goes on a quest in search of the Holy Grail. Roy Hobbs is on a journey to succeed as a baseball player and the Holy Grail being the pennant. Another example of a mythological element in the film is Roy’s bat, wonder boy, as it represents King Arthurs’s Excalibur. Roy Hobbs’s character also loosely follows the story of The Odyssey. In that story, Odysseus goes on a quest, but is struck down by Calypso and it takes him twenty years to return home. In The Natural Roy goes on a quest to be the best there ever was. He meets a woman named Harriet and is shot by her, it takes him sixteen years to get back in the game.
Another character in the film The Natural is Pop Fisher, and he can be related to the Fisher King. The Fisher King was a broken man who guarded the Holy Grail. The only one who could heal the Fisher King was Sir Perceval. In the film, Pop Fisher is the coach of the New York Knights who were a far below average baseball team. Roy Hobbs goes to New York to play for the knights and turns everything around for them, even the water in the dugout, which was undrinkable to Pop before Roy came does not taste nearly as bad anymore. Pop Fisher starts to believe that with Roy Hobbs, he may finally have a shot at his Holy Grail.
The Filmmakers of this movie used many camera shots to demonstrate mythological and archetypal elements in this film. One of the ways they do this is through the use of lighting. A good example of this is when Roy is up to bat, and Iris stands up in the sitting crowd. She is standing in the sunlight and lights up like an angel. Roy goes on to hit the game winning home run that shatters a scoreboard clock. The shattered clock shows that Roy’s age doesn’t affect his natural talent.
If one looks in the film The Natural, deeply, they will be able to see the many examples of mythological and archetypal elements in it. The film loosely follows the story of Sir Perceval and the Knights of the Round Table. The filmmakers also did a great job showing these elements and how they are demonstrated in the film.

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