Percy Jackson

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a children's series which was recently recommended to me, and I sat down in the past few days and read the first book, The Lightning Thief. I was quite impressed by it, such that I might even teach it whenever I teach another Introduction to Literature class. (I have toyed with the idea of focusing on appropriations of myths/legends the next time I teach it, but I'm not teaching it this fall, so that will have to wait.) It has a book level of 4.7 (which means an average fourth grader after the 7th month of school should be able to read it). I'm considering letting Nicolas read it already, if he's interested.

Several things were appealing about it. The hero, Percy (short for Perseus) Jackson, the son of Poseidon, the sea god, and a mortal woman, has been diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD--an interesting choice. Turns out, most demigods, have been--the brains are hard-wired for ancient Greek, and the ADHD is great for their battle reflexes. The very things that have seemed to Percy to mark him as a loser end up contributing to the making of him as a hero. And he is quite a hero.

I was also intrigued by the celebration of the idea of western culture in the book. Here are a couple of brief passages to illustrate the conception of the West in the book. Percy is just discovering that he is a demigod, a "half-blood," and his teacher is Chiron, who is speaking here to 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 they 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 ... 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 forces, the same gods.
...
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.... 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. (72-73)

There is none of the denigration of the west that often seems so popular today. Indeed, the quest in this book, which seems to be the starting point for a quest or battle which will be carried out through the remaining four books in the series, is founded upon the notion that "Western civilization" needs to be kept safe from the Titons--to keep the world from being thrust back into the long-forgotten darkness and chaos as when it was ruled by the Titons. Yet while insisting that western culture and civilization will continue to burn brightly in the world, there is also an implicit understanding that the United States may not continue to be its center. But that implicit statement seems to stem from an understanding of the cycles of history rather than a conception of the West (or the United States) as a tyrannical force which needs to be stopped.