Percy Jackson Hero Essay

The novel, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief, has many different characters who seek to be a “hero”, including Percy Jackson, who is the son of Poseidon, sent on a quest to return the master bolt to Zeus to prevent a war from breaking out with his two friends, Annabeth and Grover. Percy Jackson proves that he was not a hero when he ran from the chimera, had also nearly missed the date of the summer solstice (Lotus Casino), and nearly had died of pit scorpion venom as he had thought Grover or Annabeth would be the traitor. The first reason Percy shows he is not a hero is when he fought the chimera. This shows Percy is a hero because this moment not only showed how weak he was, but also the fact he had little to no faith in his father at that

This shows Percy is not a hero because he not only fell for it, he fell for it harshly, as despite how the card got them a ride, they still near-completely forgot about the quest. While I believe this was a chapter made to just “raise the stakes” or to sort of timeskip to make the story go faster, I do not agree with Percy’s actions in this chapter. Sure, he snaps his friends out of it, but they still missed a huge amount of valuable time in the casino and were quite easily distracted. Off topic, but I still do think this was a weakness of the story, as it sort of rushed along the story because of the huge timeskip of 4

This doesn’t exactly show Percy is not a hero, however I still disliked this about his character overall. He didn’t trust Grover and Annabeth despite them knowing each other (And in Grovers case, they were BEST FRIENDS), yet trusted Luke, someone he pretty much knew for a day or two who called him a friend in that short span of time before Percy’s quest. The hints were obvious about Luke, (I mean, he said his sword was literally called a backstabber..) as he was extremely distant to Percy when he returned and was suddenly friendly again when they were alone. If anything, Percy’s distrust of his closest friends instead of the more distant Luke is a flaw. While they began to get close and trust each other at the end, I find it ridiculous that he instantly thought of Annabeth and Grover at the words “You will be betrayed by someone who calls you a friend.” instead of anyone else. He didn't act when he did realize what Luke’s intentions were, either. He definitely had some time to kill the scorpion and at least attempt to get away in time. While he did cut the scorpion in half, he still got stung, and I believe it was because of just how much time was wasted when Luke spoke about how it could “jump 40 feet” and making Percy too scared to kill it on the spot, even when it crawled on his