Spoilers contained within.
1. Birth: Fabulous (odd) circumstances surrounding conception, birth, and childhood establish the hero’s pedigree, and often constitute their own monomyth style.
- Natalie was conceived as a result of her mother’s psychological need to have another child after her first child perished at a young age. Her mother refused to hold her after her birth in the hospital, which isn’t at all the norm with mothers and their newborns.
2. Call to Adventure: The hero is called to adventure by some external event or messenger. The Hero may accept the call willingly or reluctantly.
-Natalie’s call to adventure could be considered the opening scene of the play, where we see Gabe (her brother) and Natalie together for the first time, and how Gabe interacts with her. Gabe is revealed later to be no more than a figment of her mother's imagination, part of her delusions. Natalie is virtually ignored by her mother in favor of her sublime, non-existent son.
3. Helpers/Amulet: During the early stages of the journey, the hero will receive aid from a protective figure. The helper commonly gives the hero a protective amulet or weapon for the journey.
-In the second scene of the play, Natalie meets Henry, a teenage philosopher and romantic. Also a stoner. Henry and Natalie's personalities compliment each other perfectly: Natalie is uptight, Henry is mellow. Natalie is sarcastic, Henry is sweet. They grow to become boyfriend and girlfriend, and Henry takes on the role of Natalie's caretaker when her father becomes tangled up in her mother's problems. Henry is the only one to pay Natalie the attention she needs.
4. Crossing the threshold: Upon reaching the threshold of adventure, the hero must undergo some sort of ordeal in order to pass from the everyday world into the world of adventure.
-The first time Henry comes to the Goodman household to have dinner and meet her parents, disaster strikes. Natalie had been refusing to introduce Henry to her family up to this point, and we learn why in the form of Natalie's mother, Diana, emerging with a lit birthday cake announcing "It's someone's birthday!" Natalie freezes. The conversation goes as follows:
Henry: Whose birthday is it?
Natalie: (a pause) My brother's.
Henry: I didn't know you had a brother!
Natalie: I don't. He died before I was born.
Natalie storms out of the room after her father has to explain to her mother, again, that her brother is no longer alive. This scene is proven to be Natalie's breaking point. She feels that she will never be able to live up to the standards set by her mother's imaginary son, and thus turns to tearing herself down. Natalie begins experimenting with drugs (stolen from her mother) and alcohol.
5. Tests: The hero travels through the dream-like world of adventure where he must undergo a series of tests. These trials are often violent encounters with monsters, sorcerers, warriors, or forces of nature.
-Natalie's tests are without a doubt her traipses into the world of clubs and drugs. Though once consumed by school and getting into college, she begins to act recklessly, taking drugs before her audition for Yale and blowing it. Big time. She goes to clubs every night for a week straight while her father is at the hospital with her mother, who has undergone ECT treatments in an attempt to rid her of her delusions. She has, as the phrase goes, gone "off the deep end."
6. Helpers: The hero is often accompanied on the journey by a helper who assists in the series of tests and generally serves as a loyal companion.
-Throughout all of her major breakdowns, Henry is there for Natalie. Her breakdown at her big recital was due to the fact that her dad had promised that both he and her mother would be there to watch her, but failed to show up. Overlooked once again, Natalie breaks under pressure and starts banging on the piano. Henry was backstage with her and was the one to usher her away and bring her home. And the week Natalie spent clubbing, Henry was there with her, chaperoning her in a way, and making sure that she didn't do something she would regret. One night, Natalie runs off without Henry and he searches for her until he finds her passed out on the street. He then brings her home and stays with her until he's sure that she will be okay. Without Henry, Natalie would not have made it through her trials. He is a helper if there ever was one.
7. Climax/The Final Battle: The critical moment in a hero’s journey in which there is often a final battle with a monster, wizard, or warrior which facilitates the particular resolution of the adventure.
-Although hardly a monster, Diana is basically the entirety of the reason for Natalie’s inner conflicts. All of her troubles in life, in one way to another, lead back to her mother. There is a scene towards the end of the play in which Diana apologizes to Natalie for being an absent mother for nearly her entire life. At first Natalie doesn't accept the apology, saying, "I don't believe you." Diana goes on to tell her, for the first time, how her brother passed away as a baby. It was the first time Natalie had ever heard the way of her brother's passing. With her mother finally, finally accepting her son's passing, Natalie is able to begin to come to terms with things and forgives her.
8. Flight: After accomplishing the mission, the hero must return to the threshold of adventure and return to the everyday world.
-For most of Act II, when he's not saving her from clubs, Henry tells Natalie that he misses the old her. He repeatedly tries to get her to agree to attend their school's spring formal with him. Though denying him for most of the act, after somewhat working out with her relationship with her mother Natalie immediately afterward shows up at the dance where Henry had been waiting to see if she'd come for him or not. It could be said that Natalie's "mission" is just to gain the approval from her mother that she has so desired her entire life. Underneath her endless schoolwork and intense sonata-ing at the piano, all she really wants is her mother to notice her for who she is. Once that is accomplished, Natalie is once again free to be who she wants to be and can return to her life with Henry. The scene at the dance, and the remainder of the scenes in the rest of the show, do confirm that Natalie's life returns somewhat to a sense of normality (as normal as her life has ever been). Her monsters have been overcome, her mission is complete.
9. Return: The hero again crosses the threshold of adventure and returns to the everyday world. The return usually takes form of an awakening, rebirth, or resurrection.
-Natalie returns home after the dance to find her father sitting alone in the dark, weeping. Though at first stunned by the sight, she quickly realizes that her mother has left them and assures her father that everything will be okay for them. "We'll live, you'll see," she says as she pulls the cord on the lamp and the room is flooded with light.
10. Elixer: The knowledge that the hero acquired during the adventure is now put to use in the everyday world. Often it has a restorative or healing function, but it also serves to define the hero’s role in society.
-In the final scene of the show, Natalie is shown talking to Henry over her kitchen table. She tells him that Diana is staying with her parents ("Going home has never solved any of my problems,") and that they still keep in touch over the phone. The relationship between Henry and Natalie has been restored to where it was in the beginning of the show: they joke around and are generally adorable together. Natalie has returned to her former self before her trials, but even still, in a way she is different. Her tough few months helped her grow and mature in only good ways. Her outtake from her issues is clear. It's also clear that she will move on: she sees her mother leaving as something that was inevitable, and it doesn't bother her. She accepts that her mother needed to leave and actually even sees it as a good thing, moving forward. She has grown up and beyond, and is wise beyond her years. Almost as wise as Henry!
11. Home: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
-Henry and Natalie sit down at her kitchen table to do homework together, and both are surprised when her father carries a birthday cake out of the kitchen. This time, the reaction is a happy one. It's Natalie's seventeenth birthday. She has gotten through what will probably be looked back on as the roughest time in her life, and she has only flourished.
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