Initiation with pain and suffering

In class on Wednesday, Professor Sexson assigned us to find an initiation myth with pain and suffering involved to present to the class. I personally cannot stand pain and suffering when I read about it, or see it. There are movies that have gore and war, and I love them! But once you step into the realm of torture and suffering, that is the material I can do without. This is why I have never seen the Saw movies! Anyway, this assignment reminded me of two things: a movie that I have seen, and also a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The movie is Seven starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. This is the only pain and suffering movie I like and it is definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it, and worth owning. In the movie, there are two homicide detectives investigating murders that correspond to the seven deadly sins. The initiation myth assignment reminded me of this movie due to the sadistic nature of the killings. One man is forced to literally eat himself to death, representing gluttony. Another is a prostitute, forced to be brutally raped by a knife, representing lust. I won't give anything else away for those who haven't seen it, but it only becomes more painful and torturous from there.

After remembering this movie, the lust killing had me thinking about the story of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela (on page 153). Not the same situation, but similar in the ability to shock me with it's suffering. In this story, Tereus marries Procne, becoming the tyrant of Thrace and they bear a child Itys. Soon after, Procne pleaded with Tereus to bring her sister, Philomela to Thrace so she could visit her. Tereus did this, but instead hauled her to a cabin in the forest and raped her. Afterwords, Philomela told him, "you shall find just payment for your crimes, I'll tell the world how you have ravished me." To this, she prepared for death, but instead he cut off her tongue and had her imprisoned to the cabin. Little did he know that she weaved her story on the loom and sent it to her sister. Procne enraged, set free her sister, and together for revenge, killed Itys and fed him to Tereus. I didn't go into the painful details here, but when I read this story, my jaw literally dropped in horror. I have a feeling that this will happen again in class on presentation day.

Tereus cutting off Philomela's tongue.