Baby Houseman's Heroic Journey -- Part 12

This post follows up Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

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The Wikipedia article about the Hero's Journey explains that a typical story of that genre comprises three main parts -- Departure, Initiation and Return. Each such part typically comprises various subparts. For the Departure and Initiation parts, Wikipedia lists the subparts as follows.

Departure

The Call to Adventure

Refusal of the Call

Supernatural Aid

Crossing the First Threshold

Belly of the Whale

Initiation

The Road of Trials

The Meeting with the Goddess

The Woman As Temptress

Atonement with the Father

In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power.

This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power.

Apotheosis

This is the point of realization in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure

The Ultimate Boon

The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the Holy Grail.

In this series of articles, I have finished the Meeting With the Goddess and the Woman As Temptress subpart, which I renamed as Meeting With the God and  Man As Tempter.

There I argued that Johnny Castle played both roles of Baby Houseman's God and Tempter. I wrote that becoming a partner in a sexual relationship was a key part of Baby's initiation into adulthood while she was progressing on her heroic journey.

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Now I will discuss the Atonement with the Father subpart.

At the movie's beginning, Baby indicated two problems in her Ordinary World:

Everybody called me "Baby", and it didn't occur to me to mind.

I thought I'd never find a guy as great as my Dad.

Baby was a Daddy's Girl.

When Baby begins her heroic journey, she has no thought of changing her relationship with her father, but the journey brings her into a situation where she deceives and disappoints her father. Therefore she and her father will have to redefine their relationship at a more adult level.

This redefinition is not easy for either Baby or her father. In the following scene, Baby's monologue is rather immature and nonsensical. She still cannot articulate her thinking well about her own situation, and so she largely blames her father for the rupture of their relationship.

Baby's bratty monologue, of course, fails to mollify her father's disappointment in her.

Baby and her father do not accomplish a significant reconciliation until the movie's denouement.

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Baby's journey causes her to consider as a potential romantic partner a man who is very different from her father. Johnny is not highly educated, professionally successful and financially secure. Baby even feels rather ashamed of Johnny and delays introducing him as her boyfriend to her father. She feels that her father will become even further disappointed in her because of her boyfriend choice.

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This series continues in Part 13.

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