Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

By beginning the book with Percy’s Introduction, Riordan establishes (or reestablishes for familiar readers) the modern-day world he has built around the ancient Greek gods. The Introduction highlights Percy’s style of humor and his tendency to break the hypothetical fourth wall by directly addressing readers to help immerse them in the story. This narrative style persists throughout the book, as Riordan blends the world the Greek gods inhabited with contemporary references to social media platforms, famous people, places, and situations. In addition, Riordan consistently references school, classes, teachers, and extracurricular activities to appeal directly to his middle-grade target audience. The explanation of Greek myth history begins with the creation of the world and the primordial (prehistoric) gods. Though some of these early figures have only small or even nonexistent parts in the main series, they’re necessary to help contextualize the world Percy understands and to introduce the situation that allowed the Olympian gods to rise.

As the first of the primordial gods and Earth itself, Gaia plays an important role in these early times and throughout the stories, even though she’s in a deep sleep for many of the events. Together with the other primordial gods, Gaia’s power and presence represent the polytheistic (multiple-deity) religion that the ancient Greeks practiced. The primordial gods each have domain over many aspects of the world and can change their shapes, traits they pass on to the Olympian gods. Unlike the Olympian gods, the primordial gods’ appearances align with their domains and powers. For example, Ouranos (pronounced like the planet Uranus), as lord of the sky, has skin that changes color: It’s blue during the day and pitch-black with pinpricks of light at night. In addition, the primordial gods establish the unfamiliar family dynamics that Percy explores throughout the book. Both sets of gods (as well as the Titans) have children in unconventional ways and often with multiple partners. Because of their immortality and to protect their power, they interpret bloodlines loosely, which often results in marriages between siblings and other family members.

As Percy explains in the Introduction, this book describes only a few important figures from Greek mythology, and he frequently reminds readers of this by telling them that he’ll revisit a point another time or that there is a whole other story about a name-dropped character. In this way, Riordan focuses on the figures critical to the development of Percy’s modern-day Greek experience, showing the decisions involved in choosing to tell a story. Though Gaia and Ouranos have 12 children, Percy focuses most on Kronos and his sister Rhea because they play the most important parts in the rise of the Olympian gods. Kronos’s murder of Ouranos introduces one of the book’s themes, The Darkness in Everyone, by describing how the quest for power leads to negative thoughts and violence. Kronos’s killing of his father also reveals the nature that all immortal beings exhibit throughout the stories: They can do what they wish because they’re powerful. Kronos’s eating his children reveals the paranoia that immortal beings share. Though they can’t die, they cling to their power and feel threatened by anything that might take it away. Rhea’s offering Kronos a boulder to eat instead of Zeus shows the trickery that occurs within Greek myth and illustrates how the fear of losing power keeps gods and Titans alike from discerning the truth.

The events in which Ouranos’s children overthrow him in Chapter 3 introduce another theme, The Effects of Power Dynamics, showing how they apply to familial conflict. When the gods seek help from the beings trapped in Tartarus, Zeus prioritizes himself and his brothers (Poseidon and Hades) over his sisters. As a result, the three male gods obtain powerful weapons, while the women have nothing but their natural power and cunning. This establishes how the male and female gods act differently throughout the stories. While Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades launch full frontal assaults on Ouranos and shoot first, Hera, Hestia, and Demeter are sneakier, though they do enter direct combat when needed. This uneven distribution of power is also evident in how Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades take dominion over major components of the world (sky, water, and the Underworld), while Hera, Hestia, and Demeter become goddesses of various things, such as motherhood, fires, and grain. This doesn’t make the goddesses less powerful, however. While they don’t have the pure strength of the men, they’re just as valid and important in the evolution of the world and the dynamics among the gods, which Percy notes by refusing to start his book with Zeus and instead focusing on the women.