My Back Story is Sadder Than Your Back Story

I finally cleaned out the pile of school stuff that's been lurking in my closet, including my nearly-empty Bio notebook, my very full math binder, and my goofing-off-in-French-class notebook. In the last of these I found a long-forgotten list made by Ellie and I, called (for reasons irrelevant) The Cassidy Scale of Back Story Tragedy. It was just that - a scale of measuring how sad the stories of literary characters were, with an example of each, ranging from 1 (Vaguely Sad - i.e., Winston Smith) to 3 (Mildly Depressing - Harry Potter) to 6 (Somewhat Tragic - le Comte de la Fere) to 10 (Superlatively Tragic).
And today I wanted to tell the story of the character who rated a Cassidy Ten. His name is, or was, Oedipus, and I guarantee you know at least some portion of his long and consistently depressing story. As I'm doing this all from memory, I'm not sure that I've got every detail right, so I promise I'll fact-check when I've finished.

Oedipus, later to be known as Oedipus Rex, not because Rex is his last name but because he's the king, Oedipus the King, hence Oedipus Rex, because Rex means king, was born a long long long long time ago in, I think, Thebes. His parents were happy. They were the queen and king of Thebes, named Jocasta and something that starts with an L. Laius? Anyway, they were happy, until they met an oracle. The oracle said that their baby would murder his father and marry his mother. Jocasta and the king were horrified and threw the baby off a mountain. Actually, I think they told a servant to to throw the baby off a mountain. Yes, that makes more sense, because the servant couldn't bring himself to do it. He wasn't disloyal or anything, he just didn't want to throw a baby off a mountain. So he took the baby a sufficiently long way away, and gave it to an old guy, whose name escapes me.

Nineteen or so years later, Oedipus is more or less grown up and wants to wander around looking for, I don't know, the meaning of life. In his travels, he encounters an old man in a carriage, gets mad at him, and kills him. (I'm sorry, I don't know the specifics, that's the way it was always presented to me. I'll look it up when I'm done.) Then, apparently clear-conscienced, he makes his way to Thebes.

Thebes at this point is being terrorized by a sphinx, a creature with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a woman (or some combination thereof), and she/it won't let anyone in or out unless they can answer her/its riddle. Somehow the people of Thebes convey to Oedipus that their king is dead, but his wife, though not exactly young, is still beautiful, so if Oedipus solves the riddle he can marry her and become king. This sounds pretty good to Oedipus, so he says he'll give it a try.

You know the riddle; you know the answer. Oedipus gets it right, and the Sphinx kills her-/itself. He marries the queen and becomes king, and fathers two daughters and two sons. He is happy, his family is happy, and the people of Thebes are happy.

And it all goes downhill from there.

Some years into his reign, there is a plague, or a famine. I think it's a famine. This makes the king unpopular. Oedipus Rex, as he is by now known, consults an oracle and asks what he can do to make the famine go away. The oracle tells him that the murderer of King Laius must be found and exiled.

I'm not really clear on what happens next. I know they interrogate the servants, and someone named King Creon (say crayon) is involved. All I know is that somebody somewhere realizes that, oops, the king has inadvertently married his mother, and also killed some random old guy in a carriage, who was not in fact a random old guy in a carriage but the previous king. This leads to two conclusions: one, the prophecy has been fulfilled, and two, the king must be banished.

Queen Jocasta hangs herself. Oedipus finds out that his mother and wife is dead, and takes her brooches and stabs out his own eyes. (Doesn't that just make you cringe?) Then he commits suicide. His two sons kill each other, and their burial is forbidden because of the shameful way they died. One of his daughters, Antigone, who is the star of her own tragedy, buries them, and for her disobedience is sentenced to be buried alive, but commits suicide to avoid this fate.

And that's all I know of the story. I believe the author is Euripides. Now I'll go off and check my story.

Things I Got Wrong

1. The author is not Euripides but Sophocles.
2. Baby Oedipus was not thrown off a mountain, but left on a mountain with his feet pinned together. ("Oedipus" apparently means "swollen feet."
3. He was not given to an old guy, but found by an old guy. The old guy brought him to Corinth, where he was raised by the king and queen.
4. He didn't just randomly wander away. He heard the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, and left to prevent this.
5. It's not a famine, it's a plague.
6. You know, there's so many things wrong with my version that I will just direct you to Wikipedia.

Hope you enjoyed the depressing and inaccurate storytime. This post took forever and my eyeballs are feeling funny, so goodbye!