It isn’t often that I dip the ol’ port-swiller beak into what the gels are reading these days, but due to the persistent enthusiasm of the eldest, I sat down yesterday and read The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, the first of a series of books entitled Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
On one level, it’s the usual sort of pre-teen angst story. Percy is an oddball and a failure and can’t understand why he’s so different from everybody else and can’t get on in the world. On another, it is pure pre-teen escapist fantasy: it turns out that the problem is that he’s actually a demigod, the son of Poseidon and a mortal woman. The Olympic gods are still very much alive and kicking, inhabiting our world and interacting with it where necessary. Percy finds all this out on the fly, so to speak, as he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a desparate attempt to head off a war among Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.
What intrigued me, however, was a larger story arc set down early on. Percy finds himself at a summer camp on Long Island, a place where other demigods go to train and learn. There, he is given some Olympic history by his old classics teacher at boarding school, who turns out actually to be Chiron the Centaur:
“Come now, Percy. What you call ‘Western Civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know – or as I hope you know, since you passed my course – the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps – Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on – but the same forces, the same gods.”
“And then they died.”
“Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not – and believe me, plenty of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either – America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here.”
As the story unfolds, it turns out that Olympus itself is now set on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building. The entrance to Hades is in a recording studio in Los Angeles. There is a casino in Vegas equivalent to the Island of the Lotus Eaters. And so on.
Also as the story unfolds, however – and I presume I’m not going to upset anyone with any plot spoilage here – it becomes clear that the pending civil war among the Olympians is not just the result of the alleged theft of Zeus’s thunderbolt (hence the title) by one of his brothers, but instead is being carefully stage-managed by Kronos, who is slowly gaining power in his prison of Tartarus, and means to break free, wipe out the Olympians and Western civilization, and reinstitute his “Golden Age,” reducing what’s left of Mankind to a renewed state of primitive savagery. And I gather that young Percy, as a certified hero in the classical sense, is going to be heavily involved in the effort to keep the Olympic flame alive in the face of the onslaught of barbarism.
Now, I don’t know where Riordon is going with this – there are five books in the series – but it struck me that there are some pretty clear parallels here between Kronos’ plan and the vision of both domestic leftist radicals – the “Eco-warriors” and so on- as well as Islamofascist types abroad. (The book was written in 2005.) And I’m delighted that Riordan is so unabashedly pro-Western Civ in setting up the story. In fact, I believe I will go ahead and read the other four books, just to see what he does and if the parallels are made more explicit.
Of course, the gel has probably not picked up on this Why We Fight theme yet, at least not consciously. She’s more delighted at this stage simply with spotting the classical characters and allusions and enjoying the adventures (which come fast and furious). But I’m hoping that somewhere or other, the seed of the idea is being planted in her brain.
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December 31, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Diane
There is a lot more good reading in kid-lit now than when I was a kid. Now that my nieces are grown, I have no excuse to be reading it, though…
I’m thoroughly enjoying the Aubrey books, btw, even though my library system seems to be bent on making it impossible to read them in order (none of them are available at my local branch; all seem to need to be pulled out of storage and trundled across town on trucks of varying antiquity…the first requested was the third to arrive).
December 31, 2009 at 5:11 pm
The Maximum Leader
My eldest loves the Percy Jackson books. I must admit to have not read one of them. Perhaps I’ll get cracking…
December 31, 2009 at 6:30 pm
“What DO They Teach Them At These Schools?” « The Port Stands At … School’s Rate
[…] from: “What DO They Teach Them At These Schools?” « The Port Stands At … By admin | category: boarding school | tags: also-told, boarding school, centaur, chiron, […]
January 2, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Schliemann
I suppose that there is a long history of people using the Greek and Roman gods as a literary device, and this carries on in that tradition. So no objections here. But I cannot help thinking about Chesterton’s observation that Christianity ended mythology.
I am currently reading a couple of books by Rene Girard, who demonstrates why that is — Christianity (and indeed, Judaism before it) reverses the core idea behind all mythology (the necessity of a ritual murder and the scapegoat) by showing the innocence of the scapegoat. Girard (well worth reading, by the way) posits the rather shocking notion that all of civilization is founded on the idea of the ritual murder of a victim who is then venerated as a God. Fascinating stuff.
January 2, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Robbo
Yes, GKC uses that idea for the central theme of his The Everlasting Man.
Frankly, I’m none too concerned about the theological implications simply because this is such obvious fantasy. Riordon does very briefly make mention of the difference between “God” and “gods” toward the beginning of the book, suggesting that they are two entirely different concepts, but does not elaborate. It would be interesting to see if he were to come back to this later, but I’ve an idea that he was just trying to set the boundaries of his playground.
Now, if the gels start insisting on burning a part of their dinners on a sacrificial altar before beginning to eat, well then we might have a problem…
January 21, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Zeus, By Jove! « The Port Stands At Your Elbow
[…] As I mentioned a while back, I read the book at the behest of the daughters and found it quite entertaining. Indeed, I have gone on to reading other books in teh series with the middle child at bedtime. The only trouble is that she also reads them on her own, so that as we progress from night to night there are frequent jumps in teh story from where I had left off previously. I suppose I will have to go back and read the books all the way through on my own, as my brain won’t allow me any rest until I have filled up these gaps in my knowledge. […]