The Sea of Monsters

Annabeth Chase returns as a primary character in the Percy Jackson series. Between the end of The Lightning Thief and the beginning of The Sea of Monsters, Annabeth spent her first school year away from camp since she ran away from home six years ago. In Chapter 2, Percy looks at a picture Annabeth sent him of a trip she took with her family to Washington D.C., showing Annabeth is settling back into life with her mortal family. Like Percy, she lives with one foot in each world, and Annabeth has the gray eyes of Athena’s children, which make her look “like her mind was racing a million miles an hour” (26). As a child of wisdom and strategy, Annabeth thinks and plans constantly, making her the brains and tactics of the quest in The Sea of Monsters.

Annabeth faces several emotional battles throughout the book. On Circe’s island, she almost falls victim to the sorceress’s spell. Circe’s library and books on architecture call to Annabeth’s desire to create great things. Percy’s friendship pulls Annabeth back from the brink, showing how their strengths and weaknesses complement one another. When they pass the island of the Sirens, Annabeth hears her desire to remake the world as a better place in the creatures’ song. The golden city of Annabeth’s imagination that Percy sees when he rescues her from the island represents Annabeth’s youthful belief that she can do better than anyone else. This belief allows her to fall victim more easily to Luke’s goal of destroying Olympus and starting over. Though Annabeth wants something similar, she doesn’t believe in how Luke wants to accomplish reworking the world, showing how there are multiple angles from which any problem can be viewed.

Tyson is a baby cyclops and a son of Poseidon, making him Percy’s half-brother. At the beginning of the book, Tyson relies on Percy to protect him and is “scared of just about everything, including his own reflection” (9). Over the course of the story, he comes into who he is and finds his strength in making and fixing mechanical things. By the end of the book, Tyson stands on his own and is strong enough to leave Percy’s side to go make weapons for the upcoming battles Camp Half Blood will face. Like Grover at the end of the Lightning Thief, Tyson going his own way at the end of the book symbolizes his heroic role in the series is over. As the second character to leave Percy and Annabeth behind, Tyson, along with Grover, represents how Percy and Annabeth are the leading duo of the series.

Clarisse is a daughter of Ares and “a big girl with cruel eyes” (41). In The Lightning Thief, Clarisse was little more than a bully to Percy. In The Sea of Monsters, she is still mean, but she becomes a three-dimensional character with wants and fears and strengths. Throughout the book, Clarisse barrels into danger, sometimes rashly. Though she doesn’t think before acting, she doesn’t back down from a confrontation, even when it seems she will lose, and she puts everything she has into every fight. By the end of the book, she and Percy have a budding respect for one another. They aren’t quite friends, but they are no longer sworn enemies. Clarisse’s growth shows how people can change, as well as how a tough exterior is often a mask to hide what someone perceives as weak emotions.

At the end of The Lightning Thief, Luke betrayed Percy and Camp Half Blood, aligning himself with Kronos against the gods. In the Sea of Monsters, Luke works to amass an army of demigods and monsters who would see the gods destroyed, and he represents the idea that “the West is rotten to the core” (127). Luke blames the gods (his father, Hermes, in particular) for demigods living unfulfilled lives and, at a greater level, for things he considers modern evils, such as capitalism and consumer culture. By the end of the book, Luke is even more fiercely dedicated to his beliefs, showing his unwillingness to consider any viewpoint other than his own.

Polyphemus is a cyclops with one “baleful milky eye” (206). He is most famous in Greek myth for his appearance in Homer’s “Odyssey,” where Odysseus blinded him. In Riordan’s story universe, the “Odyssey” is history, rather than myth. Polyphemus is still half-blind from his battle with Odysseus and still desires revenge on “Nobody,” the false name Odysseus gave while the cyclops held him captive. Polyphemus represents how people horde things they like. Though he has no real use for the Golden Fleece, Polyphemus keeps it because it attracts satyrs who seek Pan, which provides Polyphemus with a steady supply of tasty satyr meat.

Circe is a beautiful sorceress with a gown of moving fabric and long, dark hair “braided with threads of gold” (172). She also appeared in Homer’s “Odyssey,” where she turned some of Odysseus’s companions into pigs, whom Odysseus later rescued. In The Sea of Monsters, Circe represents how anything taken to extreme can be harmful. Circe is an extreme feminist who believes all men are pigs and should be eliminated. As a result, she doesn’t see men for who they are as individuals and just assumes they are all the same. In addition to stunting her own growth as a person, she also casts feminism in a poor light by taking such an extreme interpretation of it.

At the end of The Lightning Thief, Grover left Camp Half Blood to search for the god Pan. The quest took him to the Golden Fleece and Polyphemus’s island, where he was captured. To stay alive, Grover pretends to be a lady cyclops and sews a train for a bridal gown, which he unravels every night. Riordan bases Grover’s situation on Penelope (Odysseus’s wife) from the “Odyssey.” While waiting for Odysseus to return home after the Trojan war, Penelope wove a burial shroud for Odysseus’s father, promising suitors she would choose a new husband when she finished. Then each night, she undid her progress. Grover’s capture both jumpstarts and provides a solution for saving the camp.

Tantalus takes over as the new activity’s director at Camp Half Blood after Chiron is blamed and sent away for letting Thalia’s tree be poisoned. Tantalus looks “Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time” and hates both the camp and campers (58). He doesn’t believe there’s any danger and actively works to discredit the threat to Camp Half Blood. In mythology, Tantalus tried to feed his own children during a feast with the gods, and Zeus punished him by condemning him to be forever hungry and thirsty but unable to eat or drink. Riordan carries this into The Sea of Monsters as a reason for Tantalus’s perpetually bad attitude. He modernizes Tantalus’s tale by making him obsessed with trying to eat, going so far as to sneak up on his food.

Hermes is the messenger god and Luke’s father. He appears as a jogger with the sly smile Percy has seen from many of his children. Hermes gives Percy the cannister of the four winds and the multivitamins that help on the quest for the Fleece. In addition to aiding Percy’s success, the gifts represent how the actions of gods and people have multiple motivations. Hermes doesn’t want to see camp fall, but he also helps Percy along in hopes he will get Luke to change his mind about the gods.