Hero Journey - The Ordeal

In Janie's Hero Journey, I feel like the Ordeal is Janie and Tea Cake's encounter with the huge hurricane. By definition, the Ordeal is the central life-or-death crisis in which the Hero faces her greatest fear and experiences some sort of "death." As Janie and Tea Cake escape the hurricane, they face death numerous times. Because they leave the Everglades late, they have to run with the storm rapidly pursuing them; with even a moment's hesitation, they could have died. Once they get to the Six Mile Bend, they see death everywhere. "They passed a dead man in a sitting position on a hummock, entirely surrounded by wild animals and snakes" (164). When they sit down to rest and Janie tries to get something to cover Tea Cake with, she falls into the tumultuous water, which is her closest encounter with death, her moment of greatest fear. She survives, but Tea Cake gets bitten by a rabid dog while trying to help her out of the water (this will play a central role in in the later stages of the Hero Journey).

Although they both survive the hurricane, in a way, Janie has "experienced 'death,'" another part of the Ordeal stage. "It was years later by their bodies. Winters and winters of hardship and suffering" (166). The hurricane takes a tremendous toll on Janie, but she survives this 'death,' and she and Tea Cake return to the 'Glades. For the next month or so, she and Tea Cake live a rather calm and peaceful life, rebuilding the house and finding work. All of this is part of the Reward, in which the Hero gets a chance to replenish herself, and the audience gets to "catch its breath." However, this respite won't last for long, because soon enough, the Road Back and the Resurrection will come, involving the Hero's most dangerous meeting with death. I won't go into that because Irene already explained those stages of the Hero Journey in her post.