The hero’s journey is a story pattern described by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Also called a “monomyth,” it’s one big story pattern that gets used over and over. Many novels and myths follow this pattern, some tightly and some loosely.
There are 17 official parts to the hero’s journey, but hardly any stories actually include all 17. More generally, the hero's journey always involves someone going out into an unknown world, fighting against forces encountered there, then coming back home with some kind of blessing and/or significant personal change.
The 17 steps of the journey can also be grouped more loosely into three sections:
1. Departure (all the stuff before the quest really begins)
2. Initiation (all the adventurous stuff) and
3. Return (going back home with new knowledge and/or power).
It may be best to organize your understanding of The Prince and the Pauper along these lines, since we won't find parallels to all 17 steps of a hero's journey in this novel, and, significantly, since this novel is essentially about two heroes, not one. Let's explore that:
1. Departure. Tom suffers through his young life, enduring hard work and abuse. He learns to read from Father Andrew. Edward, the prince, lives a life of luxury.
2. Initiation. Tom and Edward enter each other's worlds: Tom assumes the role of the prince, and Edward tries to survive as a street boy. Edward meets Miles and tries to help him regain the woman he loves (Edith), while Tom learns he will become the king and gradually becomes better in this role. Edward continues his difficult struggle, falling in with thieves and being helped by a hermit, and then he rejoins Miles and resumes their quest to win back Edith.
3. Return. Edward interrupts the coronation ceremony, preventing Tom from becoming king, and reinstating himself as the rightful king. Edward then uses his authority to ensure that both Tom and Miles can live happy, comfortable, honorable lives.
Although you can certainly try to identify all 17 individual aspects of the hero's journey, you won't be able to produce a full list. And, your list may be different from another reader's.
For example, Step 1 of 17 in the hero's journey is the "Call to Adventure," in which the hero is somehow induced to begin a journey. I might say that the act of Tom and Edward switching clothes is the call to adventure, but you might say that the act of Edward escaping from Tom's father is when the adventure really begins.
Let's take another example. Step 2 of 17 is the "Refusal of the Call," in which the hero is reluctant to head out on the adventure, or some other event prevents the journey from moving forward. I could say that when John brings Edward to court, this is what temporarily prevents Edward from embarking on his main adventure. But you could say instead that Tom's apparent memory loss and madness prevent him from really beginning his journey toward assuming the role of a king.
When it comes time to identify who the father figure should be in Step 9: "Atonement with the Father," will you pick Tom's despicable father, or Edward's dying father, or Miles as a sort of stand-in father for Edward? It's up to you.
We could continue in that way, finding events in the story to match up with individual steps of the hero's journey--labeling some character's help or another's as "supernatural aid," identifying some difficulty or another as "the belly of the whale," and so on, but the main point here is that all of this interpretation is very subjective. The names of many of the steps in the hero's journey are so ambiguous and metaphorical, so open to interpretation, that we could never create an authoritative or "right" list of which events in the novel's plot line up with each step.
However, one step in the journey is easy to identify clearly, since it's essentially the resolution of the plot. In Step 17 of the journey, called "Freedom to Live," the hero is so full of wisdom and experiences that he lives fully, has no regrets, and doesn’t fear the future or death. You could argue that Edward's assumption of the role of king, coupled with Tom's continued existence as a noble and a friend of the king, constitute a definite ending to their respective journeys and that they have earned the "freedom to live."
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