Smelly Gabe Character Analysis

Gabe is Mom’s husband and Percy’s stepfather. Percy calls him Smelly Gabe because he reeks, in addition to being crass, cruel, and ugly. Though Gabe works as a manager for an appliance shop, he never goes to work and instead stays home and plays poker all day. The apartment is covered in his beer cans and dirty laundry, and he often steals money from Percy in order to gamble. Gabe is rude and demanding; he insists that Mom feed him when and what he wants, and he does everything he can to control her financially. Mom clearly hates Gabe, so Percy cannot figure out why she stays with him. Grover later explains that Mom had good reason to stay: Gabe’s smell is so pungently human that it covered up Percy’s obvious half-blood scent. Gabe is likely the reason Percy survived as long as he did. Once Percy heads off on his quest and begins making headlines for potentially being unhinged and kidnapping Mom, Gabe latches onto the excuse to publicly hate Percy, and he offers reward money for information leading to Percy’s capture. In retaliation, when the media “discovers” that Percy was supposedly kidnapped by Ares, Percy offers TV viewers free appliances from Gabe’s store as a mark of Gabe’s gratitude. Once Percy and Mom get home, Percy discovers that Gabe has been physically abusing Mom. He leaves Mom Medusa’s head to turn Gabe into stone, and Mom uses the resulting statue to pay for her first term of college.