The Titan's Curse

The gods have no requirement to claim their children, and at Camp Half-Blood, there is even a policy for those unclaimed: They will stay, putting them in Cabin Eleven to share with the children of Hermes.

This leads to a fraught relationship between the gods and their half-blood children. For Luke, this led him to turn to Kronos and against his father and the rest of the Olympian gods. After all, monsters often chase after demigods before they even realize their divine parentage, making being a half-blood especially dangerous. As they discuss the ease of being a mortal, Percy notices that Thalia must have “given it a lot of thought” (222). Furthermore, gods sometimes do not even remember the names of some of the demigods that they encounter, as happens when Apollo fails to remember who Annabeth is during his conversation with Percy, who immediately thinks, “I tried not to feel mad. I knew the gods had a hard time taking mortals seriously, even half-bloods. We lived such short lives, compared to the gods” (156).

This lack of attention is a constant source of conflict for Luke and Thalia. Both Luke and Dr. Thorn try to tempt Thalia to Kronos’s side so that she can summon the Ophiotaurus. Dr. Thorn states, “You father abandoned you, Thalia. He cares nothing for you. And now you shall gain power over him” (234). She hesitates for a long while, and she does so again—albeit for a shorter period of time—when Luke urges her to remember all the times that they cursed the gods, and it catches her attention enough to make her hesitate. However, she is able to overcome this and attack Luke, seemingly killing him.

The gods themselves debate destroying Thalia and Percy at the end of the novel because of the threat they pose, demonstrating that they often prioritize themselves over their human children. However, both Zeus and Poseidon interfere on their children’s behalf, and Thalia shines, with Percy thinking, “I knew how she felt. I’d hardly ever talked to my father, much less a compliment” (289). They have been deprived of their parents’ praise, so it is especially impactful, even though the rest of the gods immediately take a vote on whether to preserve their lives. Artemis, who has no children, points out the hypocrisy of the debate, stating, “if we destroy heroes who do us a great favor, then we are no better than the Titans. If this is Olympian justice, I will have none of it” (290). Here, she explains exactly why demigods like Luke might be attracted to joining Kronos, and, if enough half-bloods follow his lead, it could mean devastation for the Olympians.

Riordan draws on an oft-forgotten element of Greek mythology: the consequence of heroes’ actions. This theme first appears as Zoë’s disdain for boys when she brings Percy into Artemis’s tent, foreshadowing her past encounter with Hercules in which he used her knowledge of Ladon the dragon to retrieve a golden apple. His actions resulted in her banishment from the garden and ultimate alliance with the Hunters of Artemis.

Mr. D expresses this theme most obviously in his confrontation with Percy once he discovers that Percy has decided to covertly follow Zoë, Thalia, Bianca, and Grover on their quest. He tells Percy the story of Ariadne, who helped Theseus escape the labyrinth only for the hero to abandon her. Dionysius finds her and they fall in love, and so he is especially sensitive to the negative effects that heroes can have. He tells Percy,

My point is you heroes never change. You accuse us gods of being vain. You should look at yourselves. You take what you want, use whoever you have to, and then you betray everyone around you. So you’ll excuse me if I have no love for heroes. They are a selfish, ungrateful lot. Ask Ariadne. Ask Medea. For that matter, ask Zoë Nightshade (124).

Percy doesn’t entirely understand what this means at first, but as he learns more about Zoë’s interaction with Hercules, he tries to be more mindful of his own decision as a hero.

The arc of Percy’s transformation as a hero follows the motif of his impulsiveness. At the start of The Titan’s Curse, Percy dives into battle without thinking in both his first altercation with the manticore and in Capture the Flag. However, by the end of the novel, he doesn’t continue to fight Atlas alone. Recognizing that Artemis has the best chance to defeat Atlas, Percy decides to sacrifice himself by holding up the sky so that the goddess can engage in battle. Zoë sees this and tells Thalia that perhaps not all men are untrustworthy, having seen Percy’s heroics. She tells him that he is “nothing like […] Hercules. I am honored that you carry this sword,” referring to Riptide, which she originally gave to Hercules to fight Ladon (278).