Rewrite the Oedipus myth. What if Laius and Jocasta never consulted the Oracle?

Cafe Society
1

I should think we’d all know the story of Oedipus from Greek myth. But here’s a brief summary:

Laius & Jocasta, king & queen of Thebes, consult the Oracle at Delphi about their chances of ever having a child. The Oracle reports that, if Laius has a son, the son will kill his father and marry his mother. Understandably they’re disturbed by this, and when Jocasta eventually does have a child, Laius orders a servant to abandon him in the wilderness. But the servant, lacking infanticide in his heart, passes him on to a Corinthian shepherd, and eventually is adopted by the king and queen of Corinth and named Oedipus. As an adult, Oedipus consults the oracle his ownself and is told that he is destined to murder his mother and marry his father. Not wishing to do this, and not realizing he is adopted, he leaves his home. One day he encounters his biological father and five servants at a crossroads. Naturally, neither recognizes the other. An argument ensues, and Oedipus kills not only Laius but all the servants but one. Some time after this he journeys to Thebes and delivers the city from the monstrous Sphinx; he is then crowned king and marries Jocasta. Many years later, after he and Jocasta have children of their own, Thebes is beset by a plague; in the course of investigating it, Oedipus discovers his true identity.

Okay, that’s the basics everybody remembers from 9th grade. What some may not know is that there are those who say that this tragedy was ordained by the gods as part of a long-standing curse against the line of Cadmus, founder of Thebes.

Let’s say that that is the case, and that the gods always intended for Oedipus to end up as the eponynom of motherfucking. But they’re not micromanagers; that is, they dont’ care how their victims reach their particular fate, as long as they do. Let’s further say that Laius, aware of curse, decides early in his life that there is no possible good result from him ever going to any oracle, and so does not; thus he and Jocasta are not aware of the specifics of the doom appointed them. Consequently, when Jocasta gives birth to their son, they keep the baby and intend to raise him as their own.

How, then, would the story play out?

See? I CAN start change-the-story threads about things other than Tolkien.

2

I’m sure fate would somehow intervene to separate the child from his parents at an early age. Isn’t that whole story at least partly to demonstrate how one cannot duck fate?

3

Eww. I don’t think that’s how I remember it.

Who could blame him? Marry his dad? I thinking eating a bullet would be a more attractive option for most guys.

Seriously, Anaamika has it right. The point of the story is that fate will have its way, regardless. No matter what, Oedipus would still kill his father and marry his mother. The details are inconsequential. The fates would make it happen no matter what.

4

Oh, I didn’t even notice that. That is too fucking funny.

5

Freud would have died a pauper. And the world would have been thus a slightly less woo-woo place.

6

The story, at least as Sophocles plays it, is a Greek tragedy, i.e., it is about a great man undone by a tragic flaw. In Oedipus’ case, this flaw is stubborn curiosity – once the mystery presents itself of what sin or crime is causing a plague to fall on Thebes, he will keep digging until he finds the answer. Even though Jocasta, who might have some dark inkling of the truth, tries to discourage him. Maybe the moral, if there is a moral, is that nobody should consult an oracle or otherwise try to peer too deeply into the mysteries of time and fate. (Note that the deed by which Oedipus destroys himself, and the flaw giving rise to said deed, have nothing at all to do with his sins of killing his father and marrying his mother. In that, he was simply doing what any Bronze Age Greek prince would have done, in his place, with only the same knowledge Oedipus had at the time.)

Of course, if Oedipus didn’t do that – what, if anything, would bring an end the plague? Digging for the truth was his duty as a king, or so it appeared at the time.

7

Dio, Mika, that’s my point. The gods have a hard-on for the whole family; Oedipus is screwed no matter what. I was asking people to make up a story in which we get to the end point of Oedipus Rex without the predestination paradox.

8

Too motherfucking funny.

9

I once read an alternate version, I think it was in Playboy, where, when Oedipus and Jocasta learn the secret, they decide to just hush the whole thing up, quietly disappear the shepherd who knows too much, and go on just as they have been. What’s the big deal, after all?

Don’t think that would have played to well with an audience in Sophocles’ day.

10

There’s another element to this: Jocasta is possessed of a cursed necklace (the Necklace of Harmonia) that endows her with eternal youthful beauty. That’s why even though she’s a generation older than Crazy Oeddie (and very much “old enough to be his mother…”), she’s still fertile and a hottie to boot. In the play Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) by Sophocles, she commits suicide by hanging herself with this necklace.

As for Laius being cursed, the legend goes that he was cursed for having abducted and raped the son of another king (Pelops) while visiting his court, violating the sacred laws of hospitality, not to mention a young man (though he did “teach him to drive a chariot” in return, unless that’s an Ancient Greek euphemism now lost in time).

In both cases, people are cursed for being unable to resist their lust: Laius for a specific offense (the rape of Chrysippus) and Jocasta for knowingly bearing a cursed necklace for vanity’s sake (and Laius again, for going along with it after being warned not to marry her, in order to have an eternally beautiful wife).

One could easily spin this into a nice 10th-grade English paper using the story of Oedipus (and by extension, the “sequel” story of Antigone) as illustrative of the Ancient Greek concept of hubris. I know, because I’ve done it.

11

Actually, I think Jocasta is screwed no matter what…

Did anyone else hear this sentence in Ricardo Montalban’s voice?

12

Of course, in that time and place, a woman only 15 years your senior was old enough to be your mother.

13

True. Years before I heard of the Necklace of Harmonia, back in high school, we fanwanked it that Jocasta was only 15 when Oedipus was born, and that he was only 18 or so when he arrived in Thebes as an adult. It didn’t seem unimagainable.

14

This was apparently the standard method of abortion in those days and the Oedipus myth is in great part a morality tale about abortion.

15

Great Debates is on the second floor; the Pit is in the basement. Can you find your way there alone? I’d help, but I appear to have stepped in some zebra droppings and so must clean my boots.

16

I’d say that if they had no knowledge of the curse and kept the baby as their own Oedipus would have grown up knowing both of them and killed his father in a horrible accident. Then, being distraught by what he had done, he flees to live on his own in the wilderness and changes his identity so he cannot be tracked down. After years of living in shame and solitude he eventually comes back but is unaware of his mother’s possession of the necklace. Being overjoyed at the prospect of finding a woman just like his dear mother (and she not recognizing him due to his appearance after living for years in the great outdoors) he marries her and she bears his children.

17

:confused: All the problems would have been prevented if they had aborted Oedipus, or let him be born and then stabbed him.

But, there were no safe methods of abortion then, and actually killing your own baby with your own hands was unthinkable – not because it was murder, not because it was infanticide, but because it was killing your own blood relation. Family loyalty was all-important to the Greeks. To kill your own blood was a special offense to the gods. So, they got rid of unwanted babies by exposing them – not really murder, as they saw it, because time and the elements would do the killing, and the baby might just possibly get rescued and adopted as in the Oedipus story (or, rescued and raised as a slave).

But . . . I don’t see how anything in the Oedipus story, whether in the original oral tradition or as told by Sophocles, can be read as moral condemnation of any part of that. It was just how things were.

18

Not to join the hijack, but it wouldn’t have. I think the Erinyes would have considered stabbing Oedipus outright to be a family murder they’d [del]have to see avenge[/del] be amused to torment Laius specificaly and Thebes in general over.

19

Really? I mean, they never punished Oedipus for killing his father - the screwed-up stuff that followed was the result of a curse laid on his ancestors, not him personally.

20

Oedipus killing Laius was part of a PREVIOUS curse. Anyway, the Kindly Ones knew what was coming; since Apollo had this one covered anyway, they were content to sit back, eat some popcorn, and watch the fireworks.