An ordeal is a torment.
Suicide is torment or pain, whether physical or moral. The term comes from the Latin supplicium and can refer to bodily injury or even death that is inflicted as punishment , or to the place where a prisoner suffers this punishment.
For example: “The condemned man lived a long ordeal before dying,” “It was an ordeal to have traveled twenty hours in these conditions,” “I want the ordeal to end once and for all.”
Concept of torture
The concept usually refers to torture or a bad moment that a person experiences due to some circumstance. An ordeal can be linked to deep pain or discomfort , so its meaning, in everyday language, is quite broad.
It can be said that a subject who is going through a severe illness is experiencing an ordeal: "Michael has been hospitalized for eight months and cannot even breathe on his own, so we pray every night for his ordeal to end . " The intervention was a success and the torture is now a thing of the past.”
Suffering a tragedy can also be understood as an ordeal: “I have been living a daily ordeal since an unconscious person ran over my son,” “This ordeal will not end until my niece's body appears.”
Sometimes, the torture is nothing more than a bad moment , without becoming something truly tragic: “Have you traveled on the subway first thing in the morning? It is an ordeal that I would like to avoid” , “Getting served in this restaurant is an ordeal” .
The examples presented up to the previous paragraph demonstrate that the use of this term is truly broad, since it can be used both to describe an authentic tragedy that generates very deep pain in those who must go through it, as well as an annoying situation but without much importance or significance , as be the ineptitude of an employee in a store or the delay caused by a traffic jam on a major avenue.
The notion of torture can refer to discomfort: "Traveling on public transportation in this city is an ordeal."
Death penalty
The term torture can be used as a synonym for the death penalty (also known as execution and capital punishment ), a measure used to cause death to a person convicted by the State, as the maximum punishment for having committed a capital crime.
With the exception of Belarus , the death penalty has been abolished in Europe and its practice criminalized, and the same is true in much of the world, although it is still allowed in countries such as Japan , Botswana and the United States .
The torture of Tantalus
Tantalus is the name of one of the sons of Zeus , according to Greek mythology, and his story has a truly terrifying ending, as he ended up being sent to Tartarus , the bottom of the Underworld , where the wicked receive terrible punishments for their crimes.
After being invited by Zeus to share the table with the gods of Olympus , Tantalus did not hesitate to tell his experience to mortals or to reveal secrets that they should not know. Likewise, as if he had not shown enough signs of disloyalty, he decided to steal ambrosia and nectar to support his story with irrefutable evidence.
But this is nothing compared to his subsequent crimes , such as having offered his own son as a dish for a banquet for the gods, dismembering him and serving him himself. Zeus , tired of Tantalus ' atrocities and lies, crushed him with a stone and condemned him to eternal torture.
Tantalus's torture consists of spending eternity in a lake, with water up to his chin, under a threatening rock that hangs over him and a fruit tree that moves away every time he tries to eat one of them: to pay for his mistakes. , you will forever suffer intimidation and the impossibility of satisfying your hunger and thirst.