Vogler, Memo From the Story Department:
Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear. Out of the moment of death comes a new life.
Once the hero enters this dangerous place, he or she will face challenge after challenge until finally, they come into a confrontation with the antagonist or their greatest fear. The hero must draw upon all of his or her skills and experiences gathered during the “approach” phase in order to overcome the most difficult challenge yet. Only through some form of death and rebirth (whether literal or metaphorical) can the hero transform into a new version of themselves who is capable of defeating the antagonist. Usually, this death and rebirth grants the hero a greater power or the insight necessary to fulfill his or her destiny or to reach the end of the journey. The Ordeal can occur around the Midpoint of the story or closer to the end of Act 2 depending on the needs of the story and the tastes of the storyteller.
Batty - Movies That Move Us:
The Ordeal highlights the shift in focus from physical to emotional drive. Here, the protagonist understands the superior importance of emotional need over physical want.
Physically, the protagonist experiences a big change, from old self to new self. He goes from physically wounded to physically healed; physically lacking to physically fulfilled. The Ordeal puts him in direct confrontation with the darkest physical force he can imagine, and it is here that he must assess the physical possibilities available to him (no longer limitations) before deciding to move beyond the Inmost Cave. The Ordeal thus represents the death of the protagonist’s physical past, with its physical problems and deficiencies, and from here on in we see the birth of his new physical future. The forces of the Inmost Cave challenge the protagonist to the hilt, but provided that he comes out alive, he is set free and given the opportunity to attain the physical treasure he has been seeking.
Vogler, Memo From the Story Department:
The outer Ordeal is accompanied by an inward Big Change with the Feeling of Life and Death. An old idea of the self dies under extreme pressure. Illusions are shattered, but from the tumult and destruction a new concept of the self is born.
Palmer - http://www.crackingyarns.com.au/2011/04/04/a-new-character-driven-heros-journey-2/
Step 8: Confronted (The Ordeal)
Vogler calls this stage “The Supreme Ordeal” but I’ve known students to form the impression that this means it’s the moment of greatest drama in the story. That’s not what Chris intended so I just refer to it as “The Ordeal”.
However, when I teach the Hero’s Journey, it’s the clips from this stage of the journey that produce the greatest emotion in the class. And in an earlier post on the midpoint, I’ve written at length on why this is such an important stage in the character arc. In summary, it’s where the hero is “confronted” with their flaw.
Up until now, the hero won’t have addressed their flaw because they haven’t had to. Not only have they done nothing about it but they’ve possibly been exploiting it. But here they reach an impasse because here someone – often an antagonist or mentor/antagonist – holds a mirror up to the hero and says, “Here you go, pal, take a good long, hard look at yourself. Not pretty, is it?!?”.
This is where, in the great films, the inauthentic identity the hero has been presenting to the world will crack and crumble away, revealing for the first time their true essence.