The Problem with Percy Jackson

The book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, originally published from 2005 to 2009, is one of the most popular series of children’s fantasy novels of the twenty-first century so far. According to the Wikipedia article on it (which may or may not be reliable here since the source it cites is a Fox Business article from 2010 with a dead link), over sixty-nine million copies of books in the series have been sold worldwide.

In case you haven’t read the series, the basic premise is that the Greek gods are real, they live in the United States, and their demigod offspring live among us. According to the series, these demigods have special powers that they have inherited from their parents. The main character of the series is Percy Jackson, the demigod son of Poseidon and a mortal woman. Major supporting characters introduced in the first book include Annabeth Chase (a daughter of Athena), Grover Underwood (a satyr), Luke Castellan (a son of Hermes), and Chiron (a wise centaur).

I first read the series when I was in late elementary school and, at the time, I loved it—although I never quite got as obsessed with it as I did with Harry Potter or The Spiderwick Chronicles (probably because I read it at a significantly older age). As I grew older, though, there was something about the series that really started to bother me. I was in around seventh grade when I really started to notice it and, ever since then, it is something that I have found very disturbing about the series and the message that it sends.

This article will be just as much an account of my personal experience with the books and how they have affected me, as well as an assessment of them and a reflection on how my sentiments towards them have changed over the years.

My first experience with the Percy Jackson books

I was first introduced to the Percy Jackson books in around late 2007 or early 2008 when only the first three books in the series had come out. I was in second grade at the time. My cousin was listening to them on audiobook and my aunt suggested that I might enjoy them. Thus, my aunt loaned me the audiobook of The Lightning Thief and I started listening to it.

Unfortunately, I was a very fearful child and I was totally freaked out by it. The book begins with a warning in which Percy tells the reader in the first person that the book is not a work of fiction and that everything he is about to say is absolutely true. Then, in the first chapter, Percy’s teacher transforms into a Erinys and attacks him while he is on a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was very frightened by all this. Ultimately, I couldn’t make it past the part where Percy’s mother was (seemingly) killed by the Minotaur. It was at that point that I decided that the book was “too scary” and that it wasn’t for me.

Ironically, by this time, I had already read all of the Harry Potter books, which I think probably contain significantly more frightening elements than any of the Percy Jackson books. The difference was that, at the time, I knew Harry Potter was fiction; whereas the warning at the beginning of The Lightning Thief raised doubts in my childhood mind about the fictionality of the work, making the story significantly more disturbing to me than it ought to have been.

ABOVE: Image of the cover of The Lightning Thief, the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series

My second experience with the Percy Jackson books

I was exposed to the Percy Jackson books again in spring of 2010 during the second semester of my fourth grade year. There was a boy in my class named Dylan who had a copy of the book Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Ultimate Guide, which included a list of clues for how to detect a satyr in disguise. Based on these clues, Dylan became absolutely convinced that I was secretly a satyr in disguise. I found out about this one day at recess from Dylan’s friend Gus. Gus told me that Dylan had a book that told him how that I was a satyr, although he did not tell me the title.

Later, I saw Dylan carrying the book around at recess, so I knew what it looked like. I was determined to find out why Dylan thought I was a satyr, so, when I saw a copy of the same book on sale at my school’s book fair, I bought it and read it. I soon discovered that it said in the book that satyrs always wear long pants to hide their goat legs and they have curly hair to hide their horns. I always wore long pants and I had curly hair, so, on some level, I suppose it made sense that Dylan thought I was a satyr.

I now know, of course, that, in classical Greece, satyrs were actually normally depicted with horse tails and horse ears without goat horns or goat legs. Their features were equine rather than asinine. It was only in the later Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC) as a result of conflation with the god Pan that satyrs became commonly portrayed with goat legs and goat horns. It is also worth noting that, very much unlike Percy Jackson satyrs, classical Greek satyrs also had enormous, permanent erections, were hopelessly addicted to wine, loved sexually assaulting women and nymphs, and are definitely not appropriate for children in any form.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix painted by Epiktetos dating to between c. 520 and c. 500 BC depicting a satyr with horse ears, a horse tail, and a huge erection holding the pieces of an aulos, a kind of ancient Greek woodwind instrument. Classical Greek satyrs are definitely not appropriate for children.

As it happened, around that time, my friends and I started hanging out with Dylan and his friends at recess sometimes. I learned that Dylan was also convinced that a girl in our class named Holly was a harpy. I kept emphatically denying that I was a satyr, but Dylan refused to believe me because I wouldn’t show him my legs to prove they weren’t goat legs. Meanwhile, Holly started pretending that she really was a harpy, probably partly as a game and partly to play a trick on Dylan, who was really convinced.

My friend Tyler, whose attitude towards Greek mythology was of a somewhat more skeptical inclination than Dylan’s, decided to unilaterally declare that he was a minor Underworld deity named “Deadkins.” Dylan, who thought the Greek myths were real, was greatly annoyed by this. He insisted that there was no one in mythology called “Deadkins” and that Tyler needed to take this stuff seriously.

Ultimately, a whole game developed in which, one way or another, everyone in the group was identified as a mythological entity of some kind. I think Dylan and I were the only ones who weren’t in on the game, since Dylan thought the whole thing was at least partially real and I continued to refuse to acknowledge that I was a satyr. I was a prolific writer even then, though, so I actually kept a detailed record of everything that happened as it was happening, with drawings illustrating it.

Unfortunately, I destroyed my original handwritten account during a phase I went through my freshman year of high school where I destroyed nearly everything I had ever written, but not until after I had written a typed account based on it, which I still have saved on my computer. I won’t share the whole thing here since it is multiple pages long, but I will probably publish it somewhere online at some point, since it is absolutely hilarious.

My first time actually reading Percy Jackson and my interest in Greek mythology

I finally read the complete Percy Jackson and the Olympians series for the first time when I was in fifth grade. I really enjoyed the books when I first read them. I think I was at just the right age. I found them hilarious and easy to read. I remember I devoured the first book in less than twelve hours and moved on to the others, finishing them off within less than a week.

I had actually been interested in mythology in general for a long time before I ever read Percy Jackson. I had been an avid consumer of fantasy literature ever since my early elementary school years. Before I ever read anything by Rick Riordan, I had already read plenty of children’s fantasy series with strong mythological influences, such as Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling, The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, and The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Reading those books had thoroughly cemented my love for the fantastical beyond question.

Nonetheless, I do think that reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series was a crucial part of what cemented my interest in specifically Greek mythology. After reading the series, I became obsessed with Greek mythology. I checked out all the books my library had on the subject and asked for books about Greek mythology for Christmas and my birthday.

I read a large number of modern retellings of Greek myths, including Tales of the Greek Heroes: Retold From the Ancient Authors by Roger Lancelyn Green (originally published 1958), the lavishly illustrated D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire (originally published 1962), Treasury of Greek Mythology: Classic Stories of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters by Donna Jo Napoli and Christina Balit (originally published 2011), and dozens of others.

Eventually, I found that all the books seemed to be repeating the same stories. Wanting more, I decided to start reading the original ancient Greek sources. That was how I became interested in ancient Greek literature. Thus, I must admit that the Percy Jackson books played an important role in leading me to pursue the study of the classics. They certainly weren’t the only thing that led me to the classics, but they did play an important role.

ABOVE: Image of the front cover of the book D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, which was one of the many books I read on Greek mythology after reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians

My growing disillusionment with Percy Jackson and the Olympians

I began seventh grade in autumn 2012. By this point, I was thirteen years old and I had really outgrown the Percy Jackson books, as well as all the other modern retellings of Greek myths. Instead of reading Rick Riordan, I was reading works of actual ancient Greek literature (in translation, of course). It was during the first semester of my seventh grade school year that I read the Iliad and the Odyssey for the first time (both in Robert Fitzgerald’s translations). The Homeric poems took some adjustment to get used to, but I quickly grew to love them.

It was also when I was in seventh grade that I read Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogonia and Sophokles’s Oidipous Tyrannos, Oidipous at Kolonos, and Antigone—all for the first time. Reading these works of classical Greek literature only got me more interested in reading other original works of ancient Greek literature. It was also around this point that I began reading about Greek history and that I first began contemplating the idea of learning to read Ancient Greek so that I would be able to read the works in the original language.

By this point, not only had I outgrown Percy Jackson, but I was beginning to have a serious problem with the whole premise of the series. You see, a large part of the premise for the series hinges on the fundamental idea that the Greek gods are no longer living in Greece, but rather in the United States, because, according to the novels, the United States is the one place where the ancient Greek legacy is currently the strongest. The wise centaur Chiron explains to Percy in explicit terms why the Greek gods are in the United States in The Lightning Thief, chapter five, pages 72–73:

“’You mean the Greek gods are here? Like… in America?’”

“‘Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.’”

“‘The what?’”

“‘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 that 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 at least 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 force and 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.’”

When I read this passage for the first time back in fifth grade, I found this explanation perfectly natural. I didn’t even think to question it. I had been pretty much exposed to idea that the United States was heir to the Greek legacy my whole life, so hearing the idea espoused by a wise centaur in a children’s novel just felt natural.

ABOVE: Screenshot of the centaur Chiron as portrayed by Pierce Brosnan in the film adaptation of The Lightning Thief

By seventh grade, though, I was beginning to notice some of the ways in which this narrative was really quite disturbing. As a seventh-grader, I wasn’t yet mature enough to put into words exactly what it was about Percy Jackson and the Olympians that felt so wrong; I just knew that I had a real problem with the peculiar excuse Rick Riordan used to transpose all the stories from Greek mythology onto the United States. To me, the whole excuse seemed not just clunky, but actually wrong in some sense.

Now, though, I know exactly what is what that made the excuse feel so clunky and wrong; the problem here is that Percy Jackson and the Olympians is trying to portray the entire Greek legacy as a uniquely American possession. The connection between the classical legacy and the United States in particular is hammered home again and again throughout Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Throughout the series, the heroes are portrayed traveling across the United States, battling monsters and visiting quintessentially American sites and monuments such as the St. Louis Arch, a Las Vegas hotel and casino, a Los Angeles recording studio, an abandoned amusement park, a doughnut shop, and the Hoover Dam. Indeed, the Greek gods themselves even have their permanent home in a palace floating above the Empire State Building in New York City! (The palace is stated to be located on “the 600th floor” of the famous skyscraper.)

If the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is defined by anything, it is the blending of Americana with elements from ancient Greek literature and mythology to send the explicit message that the United States is the new Greece.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the Empire State Building. According to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the permanent home of the Greek gods is above the Empire State Building.

“White supremacy” versus American chauvinism

This article by Maxwell T. Paule, published a couple days ago on the classics social justice site Eidolon, makes the case that the Percy Jackson novels are redolent with latent white supremacy. He presents a great deal of evidence from the novels to support his case, pointing out subtle yet damning details such as the fact that the only characters of color in The Lightning Thief are Medusa and Charon, both of whom are monsters who are described as speaking with “foreign” accents.

Paule also notices that all of the gods and demigods who appear in The Lightning Thief are white and, when Chiron lists famous demigods from throughout history, he exclusively lists three white men, all of them of English descent: William Shakespeare, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Riordan could have easily picked anyone at all from all of human history and yet he picked only these three white men to list. (Meanwhile, Paule doesn’t mention that Washington and Jefferson were also aristocratic slaveholders, which I think perhaps makes the subtle racism of that particular passage even worse.)

These are all pretty disturbing details. Nonetheless, personally, I think that calling The Lightning Thief “white supremacist” is going a bit too far. If you want real white supremacy, you can find it in movies like 300, which I debunked in this article from November 2019. 300 portrays a blatantly racist narrative of unambiguously noble Greeks (all of whom have white skin) fighting against unambiguously evil, barbarous Persians (all of whom have dark skin and dress in bizarre getup with all kinds of weird piercings to emphasize their foreignness).

The association of white people with goodness and non-white people with evil in the movie 300 is nearly absolute, with the only exception being the Greek traitor Ephialtes, who is portrayed in the film as white-skinned but grotesquely deformed. Indeed, the film’s connection between dark skin and evil is emphasized by the fact that many of the Persians in the film are clearly intentionally portrayed with significantly darker skin than is typical for native Iranians.

ABOVE: Shot of the Persian messenger killed by Leonidas in the famous “This is Sparta!!!” scene from the movie 300. Notice that his skin is portrayed as much darker than is typical for native Iranians. He is also dressed nothing like how the historical Achaemenid Persians actually dressed.

Percy Jackson isn’t like that, though. I do agree with Paule that there are definitely subtly racist elements in the early Percy Jackson books and I do agree that they do promote a message can feed into white supremacy, but I don’t think the books themselves are inherently white supremacist. The truly disturbing message of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is not fundamentally one of white supremacy per se, but rather one of American chauvinism.

Let’s go back to the passage I quoted earlier. Notice how Chiron characterizes the gods as having previously resided in various other nations, but now they have left all those nations and they reside solely in the United States. The point is clearly to emphasize that the Greek legacy no longer belongs to any of those other nations; according to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, everything the ancient Greeks did, every deed they accomplished, every story they told, now belongs to the United States.

As far as the novels in the original series are concerned, although the United States may allow other countries to share some of the Greek legacy, that legacy chiefly belongs to us. According to the books, the United States is “the heart of the flame,” not any of those other countries. The gods are with us, not with any of them. Again, notice that this is a cultural focus rather than a racial one. Riordan isn’t saying white people are superior to all other people; he’s saying American culture is superior to all other cultures.

You may think I am being unfair, but this is literally the exact explanation given by Chiron in The Lightning Thief. I can only imagine that, if Greek people were to read Percy Jackson and the Olympians and pick up on the core message about the United States literally owning the Greek legacy, the vast majority of them would feel quite uneasy—perhaps even angry—to see such a flagrantly nationalistic appropriation of the stories that were originally told by their distant ancestors.

I think that, when writing the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, Rick Riordan should have, at the very least, dispensed with the whole narrative about the gods now living in America because it is “the heart of the flame” and instead emphasized the international and intercultural nature of the classical tradition. He could have easily done this while still having the novels be primarily set in the United States.

For instance, instead of saying that the gods now have their permanent home in the U.S. because it is the “heart of the flame,” he could have said that they usually live in Greece, but they’ve come to the United States to look for Percy or that they’ve come to the United States because they sensed trouble brewing there.

Any of these excuses would have been better than the one Riordan actually gives. The truth is that the Greek myths don’t belong to any particular nation; they are part of our global heritage as human beings and everyone should be considered free to use and adapt them.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the St. Louis Arch, properly known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, a monument to American expansion and imperialism that the heroes visit in The Lightning Thief

Rick Riordan’s about-face

Incidentally, I think Rick Riordan has actually realized exactly the same problem with his novels that I have pointed out here and I think he has made every effort to change course and move away from his original America-centric message. If you look at his more recent novels, he has seemingly almost totally dispensed of the narrative about the Greek myths now belonging to the United States.

In his Heroes of Olympus and Kane Chronicles series, Riordan very deliberately includes heroes from Canada and Great Britain and he even has his heroes leave the United States and go to other countries on other continents. In the Heroes of Olympus series, the protagonists actually go to Italy and eventually to Greece itself, which is something that very noticeably doesn’t happen in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.

Riordan’s novels have also grown much more progressive in other ways. As Paule notes in his article, unlike his earlier novels, Riordan’s more recent novels are chock-full of non-white demigods and other characters. The House of Hades—the book in the Heroes of Olympus series in which the characters first arrive in Greece itself—has won praise for its portrayal of the character Nico di Angelo, a son of Hades, coming out as gay.

Nevertheless, it is almost certain that the original Percy Jackson and the Olympians series will remain Rick Riordan’s most famous and influential work. It is, after all, The Lightning Thief—not The House of Hades—that has been adapted into a Hollywood film, an Off-Broadway musical, and a video game.

ABOVE: Front cover of the book The House of Hades (originally published in 2013), in which the heroes actually go to Greece

Conclusion

The Percy Jackson books are fun and entertaining to read for elementary schoolers, but the central message of the original series is an excessively nationalistic one that is, at the very best, dismissive towards all countries on Earth that are not the United States. I disagree with Paule in that I don’t think the message is necessarily one of white supremacy per se, but I do think it is one of cultural chauvinism.

To be very clear, my problem with the Percy Jackson books isn’t that they happen to be set in the United States strictly speaking; it’s the particular excuse Rick Riordan uses about the United States being the current heir to the Greek legacy, the “heart of the flame,” and the current home of the gods.

Riordan could have easily made the novels be set in the United States but the gods still have their usual permanent home in Greece. He could have given any other excuse for why the gods are in America at the time when the novels take place. Instead, though, he basically claims that the U.S. owns the Greek myths. That’s the aspect of the novels that I have a serious problem with.

Once again, this is a message that Rick Riordan has certainly tried to correct in his more recent novels, but, unfortunately, it is too late for him to retract this message from his most famous series, the original one that started it all.