Fifty-One Tales · Chapter
The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts) explained
A wealthy woman in a modern steel-built city, possessing all material luxuries, desires a live sphinx.
What happens
A wealthy woman in a modern steel-built city, possessing all material luxuries, desires a live sphinx. After an exhaustive search, her agents find a sphinx in a desert who had once devoured the gods of a ruined temple. They chain her and bring her to the city. The woman rejoices in her ownership, but the sphinx stares into her eyes, asks a riddle, and when the woman cannot answer, she dies. The sphinx falls silent, her next move unknown.
Themes in this chapter
The Power of Myth and Imagination
The sphinx, a mythical creature, is brought into a modern materialistic world, demonstrating the enduring and disruptive power of ancient myth.
Death and the Human Condition
The woman's inability to answer the sphinx's riddle leads directly to her death, highlighting the fragility of human life in the face of unknowable forces.
Characters to notice
- Unknown
The narrator recounts the tale of the woman and the sphinx.
Key passages
“she had gold and dividends and trains and houses, and she had pets to play with, but she had no sphinx.”
Despite possessing every conceivable luxury and comfort, the woman lacked the one exotic, mythical creature she desired.
This line establishes the woman's insatiable materialism and the unique status of the sphinx as a symbol beyond ordinary wealth.
“they found a sphinx in a desert at evening watching a ruined temple whose gods she had eaten hundreds of years ago when her hunger was on her.”
The sphinx was discovered in a desert, gazing at a temple she had destroyed long ago by consuming its gods.
This reveals the sphinx's ancient, destructive power and her connection to a forgotten, divine past.
“And they cast chains on her, who was still with an ominous stillness, and took her westwards with them and brought her home.”
They chained the sphinx, who remained eerily calm, and transported her westward to the city.
The sphinx's passive acceptance of capture foreshadows her eventual, deadly retaliation.
“And the woman was very glad that she owned a sphinx: but the sphinx stared long into her eyes one day, and softly asked a riddle of the woman. And the woman could not answer, and she died.”
The woman delighted in possessing the sphinx, but the sphinx eventually gazed at her, posed a riddle, and when the woman failed to answer, she died.
The sphinx's quiet, lethal act underscores the theme that some mysteries cannot be owned or controlled.