Eldest Son: A Memoir
Bonnie Burgette

Bonnie Burgette, a sophomore psychology major, wrote this paper for her Honors World Lit I class with Dr. Wranovix. Each student was to choose a portion of a story he or she had read and re-write it from a different perspective. Bonnie chose to re-write a portion of Medea from the point of view of Medea’s oldest son. Bonnie is a person that is ultimately intrigued by everything, except computers. She is also a skilled photographer and is responsible for the artwork throughout the journal.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about what’s happened to me.  Several centuries…a couple of millennia, even.  I could be angry.  I think I have a perfect right to be angry, actually.  I mean, my mother murdered me to get back at my father.  That’s not exactly a formula for a happy afterlife, you know?  My poor brother still hasn’t accepted that he’s dead.  He stands next to Styx and watches the new arrivals – he talks to them and asks how things are “up above, where [he’s] supposed to be.”  They, of course, don’t answer him.  Most of them are in shock, or simply don’t care.  The souls from the elderly have an agenda, as they’ve been waiting for this day for many years and wish to cross the river and see their loved ones as soon as possible.  My poor brother understands none of this.  Neither will he listen to reason, and thus I am left here with no soul to speak with, only my thoughts for company.

Our mother admittedly did not have such an easy time of things.  She was headstrong and used to getting her way.  I, of course, have only realized this after much thought.  Back then, I wasn’t troubled by any of the goings-on too deeply.  I knew something was amiss – I knew that my mother wasn’t happy, and that my father had done something terrible; I just didn’t have the capacity to fully understand it.  Now that I have that capacity, I do not blame my mother as much.  I still blame her – she did not have to do what she did – but I can see where her situation would have driven her to extreme action.

You’ve heard of my parents:  My father is Jason, made famous by his journeys with the Argonauts.  Insert “ooohs” and “aaahs” here.  He met my mother, Medea, during one such journey.  They fell in love, and my mother joined him, leaving her country for wherever he would take her.  It sounds terribly romantic.  I have found out since my death that my mother murdered her own brother in order to make a quick getaway, since apparently her father disapproved of the union – while this is a minor detail to me now, given my circumstances, I often wonder if my father’s motivation for leaving her had anything to do with his fear that she might do the same to him?  You know…murder him for some asinine reason.  Stranger things have happened.

I know the point of this is to let you know what happened to my brother and myself from my point of view, and I’m getting to that…it’s just hard, you know?  It’s hard to recall that sort of…violence, especially from your mom.  A lot of kids get beaten, sent to bed without supper – some of them might also be used as passive-aggressive weapons against the other parent (“Tell your father that I will not pass the salt until he tells me why he came in smelling like cheap perfume last night”).  My mom loved my dad.  She sacrificed a lot for him.  She could never go home, could never see her father again.  She couldn’t bring her brother back from the dead and undo the regret her actions had caused.  That’s some pretty heavy stuff.  Then she bore two children for this man, and he just…leaves.  For fame and glory, no less, and a younger woman.

Well, my mother snapped.  She began talking to herself.  My brother and I were scared to go near her, and were often encouraged to stay away from her by the household help.  I remember one day when things seemed to be getting better.  The king had come by to tell her that she was being banished, and that seemed to snap Mom out of her reverie of sorrow.  She promised to be good, promised that she would be no threat…in the end, all she could promise was that she’d be gone in 24 hours, rather than immediately.  This was agreed upon, and the king left, assuming Mom would keep to her word, and all would be well soon enough.  She had a plan, of course; she always did. 

After murdering Dad’s new wife (poisoned robe and headdress...catering to the princess’s vanity – ingenious, really) AND the king (Mom never did do anything in a small way), she started acting really weird…I mean, crying and saying things about our birth and how it caused her pain, but that she was going to miss us.  Since we’d basically been accepted to live in the castle (the point of the vanity gifts to the princess), I guess she could have just been over-reacting a bit.  Then I heard her say something about hurting us to make Dad suffer.  I kept smiling, because I thought maybe if I smiled she wouldn’t do anything to me.  She sent my brother and me inside, and she stayed out in the yard, talking to people.  I hear people yelling for a few minutes, and then Mom came in and headed toward us holding a sword.

It probably wouldn’t do much good to go into detail at this point.  It’s obvious that we were both killed.  We did scream, and while there were people standing literally right outside our door, none came to help.  I suppose they were afraid, and I suppose they had good reason to be.  My younger brother went first.  Maybe this was a kindness on Mom’s part, to make him not have to watch me die – but then what must she have thought of me, to let me witness such a sight and then see her come for me, my brother’s blood on the sword, his body mere feet away and seconds from death, my own death reflected in the blade?

I’ve seen Mom.  Dad, too.  They were bewildered souls, not sure of where they were or what they were doing, merely wandering once they crossed the river into Hades.  I have spoken to neither of them.  In fact, I have not seen them since they arrived.  Dad came first, and Mom arrived a few months later.  I’ve learned what I know about them from family friends who have arrived prepared for their afterlife, and were therefore coherent enough to know who I was.

Now that I’ve told my story, I don’t have much more on which to reflect.  Perhaps I will go to my brother, stand with him, and greet the new souls.  Perhaps I can help bring some of them back to life, so to speak, so that they will have an easier time down here. 

Works Cited

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