conuly

So, the king and queen of Thebes were about to have a child, and they sent a runner to Delphi to ask the oracle whether it'd be a boy or a girl.

Not only is this a very stupid question, but I have no clue why people keep going to the oracle in the first place. It does nothing but cause trouble, because if they don't know their fate, they won't try to avoid their fate, and if they don't try to avoid their fate, the odds of it coming true are a lot slimmer.

And the oracle told them that their son would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother.

She probably was pissed at having to get out of bed to answer that stupid question. I mean, really, can't they wait to paint the bedroom?

Now, the parents don't want this, so they decide to commit infanticide. So far, so good. They pierce the baby's ankles with steel pins and leave him to die of exposure.

Because they can't just kill him, y'know. Predictably...

A shepherd picks him up and carries him to the king and queen of the nearby city, where he is adopted. They never tell the son, Oedipus, that he was adopted, and all goes well for several years, until a mysterious stranger tells the boy either 1. that he's adopted or 2. the prophecy. In the first version, he fights with his parents and runs off, and in the second he runs off to avoid his fate.

And how does this stranger know this prophecy? And why does Oedipus believe him? And why doesn't he ask his parents if they knew? And why, dear god why, doesn't he believe that he's a rational being who will not, at least, marry his mother?

On the way to Thebes, he runs across an old man. They fight over who has the right-of-way on the road, and the old man (the king of Thebes, unsurprisingly) dies.

I'm not even going to ask why neither of them just moved aside. Oh, yeah, a whole five minute wait. *rolls her eyes* And Oedipus doesn't mind being a murderer?

When Oedipus gets to Thebes, he meets the Sphinx, who has been killing everybody who used that road.

Um, if nobody can get in or out of the city, how did the king get out?

She challenges him with a riddle, which he guesses correctly, causing her to go jump off a cliff.

Overreacting, much?

In gratitude, the recently widowed queen marries him.

Let's see. You *know* the prophecy, your husband has just died under mysterious circumstances, and this kid who is EXACTLY your son's age shows up... so you run off and get married? WTF? (Well, yes, I know what you fuck, you have four more kids after all....)

The couple has four children, and a plague comes to Thebes. Cows stop giving milk, women become barren, people die. This plague is obviously of supernatural origin, so they send a runner to ask the oracle what to do. Her answer is that the plague is caused by the unsolved murder of the king, and if the murderer is caught, the plague will end. Oedipus curses the killer, not knowing that it is himself.

Oh, come on! He knows he killed SOMEbody at about that time. Does NOBODY here practice their critical thinking skills? Ever?

When Oedipus and Jocasta (his mother/wife) figure out what happened, she hangs herself and he gouges his eyes out.

Well, I guess I can see why, I mean, icky, but you can't be blamed for an accident like this, can you?