Vincent clashes with Butch, mocking him as a washed-up palooka, in a confrontation typical of the TESTS, ALLIES, ENEMIES phase. Vincent throws a challenge, which Butch refuses to rise to. The chance encounter with Butch is a TEST which shows a flaw in Vincent, a lack of respect for his elders. He should know that Butch is an experienced hero, a potential MENTOR who could teach him a few things, but instead he makes fun of him. Butch's REFUSAL to rise to this challenge shows that he is mature and careful. He sees that Vincent is a friend of Marsellus and wisely decides to let it ride — for now. However, a potential ALLY has been turned into an ENEMY by Vincent's arrogance.
The thread now follows Vincent, who has previously received the CALL to take Mia on a date. In keeping with the criminal underworld theme, Vincent approaches his own kind of MENTOR — his drug dealer, Lance — before CROSSING THE THRESHOLD to deal with Mia. The Mentor's lair is an old house in Echo Park. This Mentor, like a shaman equipping a hunter with magic potions and healing herbs, presents an array of heroin options for Vincent's selection. Vincent pays top dollar for the strongest stuff.
Vincent shoots up and cruises over in a blissful daze to pick up Mia. Here is another of Vincent's flaws — he is weakened by his drug addiction. Vincent CROSSES A THRESHOLD as he enters Marsellus' house. He passes by strange metal sculptures, like THRESHOLD GUARDIANS from some primeval culture. There's a sense that the gods are watching.
Inside, Mia operates in the godlike realm of Mr. Big, playing with Marsellus' toys. Like Mr. Big in many noir movies, she watches from a hidden upper room, manipulating Vincent by remote control with her disembodied voice. The rules are different in this SPECIAL WORLD. In Vincent's ORDINARY WORLD, he and his gun are the absolute rulers. Here, a barefoot woman holds the power of life and death. She calls the tune and selects the theme music for the evening.
Moving further into the SPECIAL WORLD, Vincent takes Mia to the strange '50s cafe for a TESTS, ALLIES, ENEMIES scene. Jackrabbit Slim's is a model of the postmodern world, in which images of the recent past are continually chopped up, recycled, and harnessed to new tasks. Legendary faces like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Buddy Holly are reduced to waiting tables and delivering hamburgers.
In a typical Hero's Journey Stage Six bar scene, Mia and Vincent TEST each other out. Menu choices assume great importance as clues to character. Phallic cigarettes are rolled and ignited. They get the measure of one another through cool but probing dialogue. Vincent boldly tests Mia by asking about her relationship with the fellow who was thrown out the window. He passes her TESTS by asking diplomatically, without assuming she was in the wrong. They become ALLIES.
They are linked in another way, revealed when Mia gets up to "powder her nose," in fact, to snort cocaine. Like Vincent she is weakened by her addiction and it will lead to her ORDEAL.
The cue to enter the dance contest is an APPROACH, moving them a step closer to the life-and-death matter of sex. From the way they groove together on the dance floor, it's clear they would have fantastic sex. Their dance moves and hand gestures reflect the SHAPESHIFTER archetype, as they try out various masks and identities in the APPROACH to love.
Vincent and Mia return to her house to face a SUPREME ORDEAL. Mia is looking very seductive, and Vincent retires to the bathroom to steel himself. He talks to his image in the mirror, convincing himself not to have sex with Mia. In this area, at least, he passes an important TEST, remaining loyal to his boss despite strong temptation. His motivation may not be so noble — he knows Marsellus will probably find out and kill him if he does fool around with Mia — but he passes the TEST nonetheless.
Meanwhile Mia finds Vincent's heroin in his coat, and mistaking it for cocaine, snorts it greedily and passes out. Vincent finds her with blood running from her nose and panics. Here Vincent is not just facing Mia's death, but also his own — for he will surely be killed if Mia dies. It was his heroin, his weakness, that caused the problem, along with Mia's lust for sensation.
Vincent races to his Mentor's house (THE ROAD BACK) where a frantic search for a medical book, a marker pen, and a huge adrenaline needle commences.
Vincent digs deep for the hero's courage to plunge the needle into Mia's heart. In a weird reversal of the classic scene from vampire movies, driving a stake into her heart is actually the way to bring her abruptly back to life, a RESURRECTION. Vincent, like Sir Lancelot, has the godlike power to bring someone back from the land of the dead.
Vincent returns Mia to her house (RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR) where, pale and wan, she gives him a kind of ELIXIR, a feeble joke from the TV pilot she appeared in. They part with another ELIXIR, a sense of friendship and mutual respect arising from sharing an ORDEAL together. They promise each other they won't tell Marsellus what happened. You get the feeling that if anything ever happened to Marsellus Wallace, these two would probably get together.
BUTCH'S STORY
The story now switches to another thread, the Hero's Journey of Butch, the boxer. It takes us back to Butch's early ORDINARY WORLD, a scene from his childhood in suburbia, where he watches a Speed Racer cartoon on TV in 1972.
A CALL TO ADVENTURE is issued by a HERALD or MENTOR, Captain Koons, the Air Force officer who brings the gold watch that belonged to his father and forefathers. In a long monologue Koons describes the watch's tradition of being carried by American soldiers in Butch's family. He relates the ORDEAL that he and Butch's father endured in the Vietnamese prison camp. The watch becomes an emblem of manly tradition that connects it to symbols like the magic swords that heroes inherited from their fathers. However, we're brought crashing back to reality with the earthy detail of where Butch's father hid the watch for five years, and Captain Koons used a similar hiding place for two years after Butch's father died. Fulfilling the DONOR function of a MENTOR, the officer gives the watch to Butch.
We're then thrown back to the present where we see Butch getting another CALL — this time his manager calling him into the ring for the fight he's supposed to throw.
"THE GOLD WATCH"
A title card now makes it clear we are taking up a major thread of another Hero's Journey. We find out, through the radio that plays in the taxicab outside, that instead of throwing the fight as agreed with Marsellus, Butch has won the fight and
killed the other boxer. He has refused Marsellus' CALL, but has answered other calls — the CALL of his own spirit to fight well, and the CALL of temptation to cheat Marsellus and collect a lot of money.
Butch CROSSES A THRESHOLD as he leaps from a window into a dumpster. He boards the cab and begins stripping off the attributes of a prizefighter, leaving this part of his life behind. In a TESTS, ALLIES, ENEMIES scene, his attitude is probed through his conversation with Esmerelda Villalobos, the woman cabdriver from Colombia. She explains her name has a beautiful, poetic meaning ("Esmerelda of the Wolves"), and Butch says his name, like most American names, doesn't mean anything. Again the note of cultural relativity is sounded. She is morbidly curious about what it feels like to kill a man. Instead of horrifying her, it seems to turn her on. Everything is relative. Butch himself offers a rationalization for having killed the other boxer. If he was a better fighter, he'd be alive. He makes an ALLY of her and wins her promise to tell the police she never saw him.