The Ordeal

I shall relate this stage of the journey to the novel The Time Traveler's Wife.

Here's my original question restated:

How does this stage affect the main character positively and negatively? Why is it necessary for the character's journey to go anywhere?

Henry DeTamble, being the time traveler, has gone forward in time and has seen himself killed. As the date of his death draws nearer, Henry realizes that he has to face his wife, Clare and tell her about it. This is clearly the central "life-or-death-predicament" since it is taken so literally in this case. Henry's biggest fear isn't death itself though, it's telling Clare. Henry faces death by showing Clare love and compassion, as he always has and finally admitting to her that he is going to die soon. Clare, as suspected and as is uncontrollable, is extremely upset, but finds ways of momentarily coping.

In this novel there are truthfully two main characters: Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire, but their answers to my question would be very similar. So, I will answer the question for Henry:

This stage affects Henry negatively because he's going to die, leaving his wife and child behind. I'm finding it rather difficult to figure out how this stage is affecting him positively. Dying: does it affect anyone positively? Well, if you’re in a lot of pain and need to be put out of your misery then I suppose yes. However, Henry is not in seething pain.

So, the only positive thing about death I can think of is that nothing lasts forever. This statement on its own may seem negative but how can you treasure life and the people around you if you have them for eternity? There will be some point in time that you’ll take them for granted, and they won’t seem as wonderful as they are; they won’t be as wonderful as they are. Even when we don’t have eternity with people we take them for granted. So, although Henry has died, he and Clare have had the remarkable privilege of knowing each other throughout the different stages of their lives. From the time Clare was six, to the time she was eighty-something.

Henry’s death was necessary for the journey to go anywhere because the journey ends with wisdom and a moral:

We all have our stresses with events and people in our lives all the way through. But sometimes we have to sit back and see all of the positive things that make it tolerable. Those are the things that keep us living, but we only seem to get them in moderation. That is because if there weren’t any negative things in our lives we couldn’t possibly know what true happiness was, or at least it wouldn’t feel the same. This relates back to taking things for granted.

So, in conclusion, the two things we need to truly appreciate happiness are having the opposite (stress, upsets) so that we can compare, and mortality. The opposite, so that we can appreciate how great happiness is in comparison, and mortality so that we don’t take happiness for granted. This still may not seem so swell, but hey, that’s life! So, considering this is how life is, then Henry’s death had a positive affect on him, like everyone else’s death has on themselves.