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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Lightning Thief, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Heroism, and Normalcy
Family
Friendship and Belonging
Godliness vs. Humanity
Summary
Analysis
Outside the DOA Recording Studios, both Annabeth and Grover reassure Percy, and Percy feels thankful for their attempts to make him feel better. They enter the lobby, which is gray and filled with people who seem a bit transparent, and approach the security guard’s desk. The guard is elegant with dark skin, blond hair, and an Italian suit. Percy reads the guard’s nametag and asks if his name is really Chiron. Smoothly and coldly, the guard asks if he looks like a centaur, spells out his name—Charon—and insists on being called Mr. Charon. He asks what they want and how they died. Grover insists they all drowned in the bathtub. Mr. Charon laments that children never die prepared—they’ll have to wait for a few centuries before they can afford passage to the Underworld.
Just like Echidna, Mr. Charon struggles to get people to take his name seriously. This adds another human element to a supernatural being; it makes the case that while Mr. Charon might be employed by the Lord of the Underworld, he also has issues of his own. One of those issues is also dealing with unprepared children—something that, while gruesome and dark, the novel presents in a humorous manner. Presenting it as an annoying part of Mr. Charon’s job suggests that the Underworld runs like any other business; it, too, has human qualities.
Themes
Percy pulls out a bag of gold drachmas that he took from Crusty and puts three on the counter. He insists that he’s dead, but Mr. Charon hisses that Percy is a half-blood. Percy insists on going to the Underworld and bravely refuses to let Mr. Charon take the money. He says that Hades probably doesn’t pay Mr. Charon enough, and Mr. Charon says it’s true—Italian suits aren’t cheap, and he hasn’t had a raise in millennia. Percy piles coins on the counter and offers to mention a raise to Hades. With a sigh, Mr. Charon agrees to take them on the next ferry. He leads them to the elevator, announces to the room of waiting spirits to not change the radio station, and starts the elevator.
Just as with Crusty, Percy is able to use what he identifies as Mr. Charon’s weakness—money and a love of expensive Italian suits—in order to get what he wants. Through this, Mr. Charon becomes a living, breathing individual with feelings, desires, and even a preferred radio station. In other words, he transforms from simply being an employee of the Underworld to a multifaceted individual who deserves to be treated as such.
Themes
Percy feels dizzy. The elevator begins to move forward and the spirits in the elevator are suddenly wearing hooded robes, not modern clothes. Mr. Charon’s appearance changes too: his suit turns into black robes and his eyes turn into dark, empty sockets. Percy blinks and they’re suddenly on a barge as Mr. Charon poles them across a dark river filled with bones, plastic dolls, and framed diplomas: it’s the River Styx. Mr. Charon quips that it’s polluted with thousands of years’ worth of hopes, dreams, and wishes that didn’t come true. Percy starts to feel hopeless. Annabeth grabs his hand, but it isn’t weird—they both just need to know that someone else is alive. Percy prays, but he’s not sure whom he’s praying to.
Mr. Charon’s aside about what’s polluting the River Styx suggests that at least for the divine, all the things that go along with being human pose problems. Unmet hopes and dreams, he implies, are damaging. To a degree, Mr. Charon is right—living a life in which one’s dreams never come true is heartbreaking—but it also suggests that on the whole, humans and their issues aren’t all that important to the Underworld. Human issues are essentially annoying pollution rather than something worth worrying about or trying to fix.
Themes
Mr. Charon steers the barge to the shore of the Underworld. Percy, Grover, and Annabeth follow the spirits to the entrance, which looks like busy airport security. Percy can hear Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gate, howling—but Percy can’t see him. The dead line up in three lines. Two lines are marked “attendant on duty,” and one is marked “EZ death.” The EZ death line is moving quickly. Annabeth says it goes to the Asphodel Fields; the other lines go to court. Some people are judged to deserve the reward of going to the Fields of Elysium and others get punishment, but most people end up in the Asphodel Fields. Grover motions to one spirit who is being frisked. Percy recognizes him as a televangelist who got caught embezzling. Grover suspects they’ll set up eternal torture for him with the Kindly Ones.
Again, the fact that the entrance to the Underworld looks like airport security puts the Underworld in terms that Percy and the reader can understand. In short, it makes the Underworld look like a business or a public place like any other—the public just happens to be dead. Seeing that this place is so mundane helps Percy to understand that the individuals who inhabit it, from Mr. Charon and the Furies to even Hades, might also be just as normal—and therefore, should be treated compassionately, as people first.
Themes
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Percy catches sight of Cerberus. The dog is mostly invisible, twice the size of an elephant, and has three heads. The dead walk around and under him without fear, but Cerberus looks right at the trio. Percy pulls out a bedpost from one of Crusty’s beds, calls to Cerberus, and throws the stick. Cerberus growls. Annabeth pulls out a big ball and tells Cerberus to sit. Cerberus looks stunned, but he sits. Annabeth throws him the ball, tells him to drop it, and shoos Percy and Grover through the EZ death line. Once they’re through, Annabeth throws Cerberus the ball again and follows. As they reach the gate, Cerberus moans sadly at Annabeth. The ball is destroyed. She promises to bring him another ball and hurries through the gates. Alarms go off. As both Annabeth and Cerberus cry, Percy thinks that even monsters in the Underworld need attention.
Cerberus’s behavior is a clincher for Percy: monsters aren’t all that monstrous if one treats them like what they are on the inside. Though Cerberus may look monstrous, he’s really just a neglected dog who longs for playtime and a friend—his goal isn’t to hurt or kill people. The effect this has on Annabeth shows that she, like Percy, understands that Cerberus isn’t all that bad. She also recognizes that she’s made another friend that, by many metrics, she shouldn’t have. This continues to help Annabeth see that she can be friends with anyone, if only she makes the effort to do so.
Themes
