Courtesy of deviantart.com

This week we read through the tragedy "Oedipus the King". A short summary of the play would be that Laius the king heard of a prophecy that his own son would kill him and then marry and have children with his wife so as soon as he had a boy, he sent it away to be killed. The servant that took the boy away pitied the boy, so he gave him to a man far away from Laius. He grew up thinking his parents were Polybus and Merope, the people who adopted him. When he was older, he took notice to people saying things about him being a bastard so he consulted an oracle where he found that he was to kill his father and marry his mother. He did end up killing his father at a crossroad without the knowledge of who the man was. Later in his life, when he wanted to know who killed Laius, he sent for a blind prophet to tell him who had done it. He said that it was Oedipus that did this and he was in fact married to his mother. Oedipus did not believe this one bit so he sent for the slave of Laius to tell him of who killed his master. He told him that he did it also. Oedipus then knows it was him and then his wife (or mother) runs off and hangs herself. Oedipus finds her dead and stabs his own eyes out.

Gross.


I was not expecting this to be violent...