The Approach and The Ordeal

Summary
This section of Vogler dealt with The Approach and The Ordeal parts of the Hero’s Journey. The Approach is the preparations a hero undertakes before entering the deepest darkest lair of his journey. This is the point of the journey where he stocks up on resources and resolve and prepares to enter The Cave (which is representative of the deepest darkest part of the Journey). The Cave is kind of a special world within the special world, with its own rules and environment to it, usually one that is quite foreboding. Within this cave is where the next part of the story, The Ordeal occurs. The Ordeal is very important part of the story and certainly needs to be the climax of at least the second act. The heart of The Ordeal is the hero’s death (or seeming death) and his rebirth. It is also where he faces the Shadow, but it is important to note that he does not always destroy the shadow here; it is just as likely to escape so that there may be a final showdown later. Theatrically, this is meant to build the tension and allow the audience to feel some sort of emotion for the hero, especially sadness when he is seemingly dead, but this turns quickly to happiness or hope when he suddenly springs back to life.
Reaction
As usual, Vogler describes the importance of the audience’s human emotions during these stages, in particular the Ordeal. The reference how humans pay good money to experience a taste of death is spot on. The experience of tasting death does make you feel more alive and therefore makes sense that it should belong in a good story. A good story does indeed have moments that make you feel emotions; this is proof that the story has succeeded in drawing you into it. Moreover, a story needs to contain tension. If everything is just easy, predictable and you draw no connection to it you will be bored. Therefore successfully delivering tension in a story is another key aspect of making it successful.
Reflection
This is an easy one to draw connections with. I do not believe The Ordeal is lacking from any story that I can think of. Even The Metamorphosis is riddled with Ordeals. For example, when Gregor first leaves the room and his father tries to harm him and Gregor ends up harming himself in the struggle to get back into his room (though on a note I would say the emotional aspect is missing here, for some reason Kafka always creates characters that you do not really feel sorry for). Sometimes it seems that a story can end with the ordeal. For example, in A Good Man is Hard to Find, there is a slight build up to he meeting with the misfit, which does end with the families actual death and that is also where the story ends.

Questions
1.) Is it possible for a story to not have an ordeal? Can you think of any?
2.) Can an ordeal suddenly appear without the buildup that Vogler describes?