In the Hero's Journey, the Road Back is brought upon the hero by an event that forces the hero to return to the Ordinary World. In the novel, Janie's blissful life with Tea Cake is suddenly shattered by the storm. The storm breaks the barrier holding back the lake, and water floods the land. The happy life Janie has made with Tea Cake in their new home is swept away. She is thrown from the Special World onto the road that leads back to the Ordinary World when Janie and Tea Cake are forced to flee from their house in the Muck. This physical act of running away from the perfect life in the Mucks reflects her Hero Journey's act of running back into the Ordinary World. During this flight, Janie and Tea Cake encounter something that will bring about the Resurrection.
When Janie is almost hurt by a dog during the flood, Tea Cake saves her by fighting off the animal. However Tea Cake is bitten on the cheek by the dog, and this eventually causes Janie's 'most dangerous meeting with death', the Resurrection. Tea Cake falls ill, and the doctor recognizes that he has been bitten by a rabid dog, and that he has been infected. Instead of facing death herself, Janie faces death through Tea Cake, because of her love for him. This was also the case earlier on in the book when she faces death vicariously through Joe during the Ordeal, which Paavan said. However, this time the death she faces is even more harrowing because it is the death of someone she truly loves, instead of someone who has used and controlled her, as Joe had. This makes this encounter of death more dangerous since there is more at stake for Janie.
Janie's ordeal with death puts her whole world at stake, since she suddenly realizes that she may never experience a day where Tea Cake is surrounding her with joy and love again. She knows that Tea Cake's illness is killing a part of her when she thinks on page 178: "Well...that big old dawg with the hatred in his eyes had killed her after all...but to kill her through Tea Cake was too much to bear. Tea Cake, the son of Evening Sun, had to die for loving her." She battles with this death all through Tea Cake's illness, as his mind is growing further and further away from reality and more into an unpredictable insanity.
Janie 'dies' when she kills Tea Cake on page 184 in self defence. In that very moment, she is also reborn, when she realizes that Tea Cake had long since left her when his mind left. She knows that she is sacrificing the part of herself that loves Tea Cake in doing the right thing of setting him free: "...Now she was her sacrificing self with Tea Cake's head in her lap...No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. Janie held his [Tea Cake's] head tightly to her breast and wept and thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service." (184). By killing Tea Cake, Janie is now back to the begining - she belongs to no man, so she is reborn. She regains freedom and satisfication in her life when she tells Pheoby, "So Ah'm back home agin and Ah'm satisfied tuh be heah. Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in my house and live by comparisons" (191)
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