Luke Character Analysis

Luke is an older teen at Camp Half-Blood. His father, Hermes, claimed Luke, so Luke is now the leader of the Hermes cabin. Though Luke seems genuinely interested in taking care of the many younger kids who wind up in his cabin, he’s also generally disillusioned with camp and life as a young demigod. He feels abandoned by Hermes and never mentions his mother, but he seems to have few connections to blood family members and struggles because of this. Luke ended up at Camp Half-Blood with Thalia and young Annabeth, and Annabeth has had a crush on Luke ever since. He’s also quite handsome and skilled with a sword. His skills earned him a quest several years ago. Though this means that many campers revere and admire Luke, Luke thinks little of his quest—he repeated Hercules’s quest to steal a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides, and the experience got him nothing but a pat on the back as far as he’s concerned. Though Luke becomes a caring mentor to Percy during Percy’s time at camp and even gives Percy a seemingly useful parting gift of winged tennis shoes, Percy later discovers that Luke is a double agent. Luke’s loneliness, angst, and disillusionment with gods and with his father made Luke a prime target for the imprisoned Titan Kronos, who seeks to rise to power again and overthrow the gods. In Luke’s opinion, the gods have done nothing but condemn him to a life of loneliness, danger, and sorrow as a pawn, so he feels he has every reason to overthrow them. Percy discovers this when Luke makes an attempt to kill him with a poisonous pit scorpion on the last day before summer campers leave. Luke’s betrayal hits everyone hard, but Percy and Annabeth vow to track down Luke when they return to camp next summer.