Identity, Heroism, and Normalcy Theme Analysis

The Lightning Thief introduces readers to 12-year-old Percy Jackson. Percy is a troubled kid—he wants to be good and do well in school, but he struggles with dyslexia and ADHD, and he has a knack for getting into major trouble at every opportunity. Percy’s sixth-grade year is shaping up to be much the same as previous years—except that once summer vacation starts, Percy discovers why he has such a hard time in school: he’s actually a demigod, or the son of a Greek god and a human mother, and his learning disabilities are typical for demigods and aren’t disabilities at all. As Percy settles in at Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp on Long Island for young demigods, and later embarks on a quest, he and his friends must examine the ways in which they’re seemingly normal and the ways in which they’re not, depending on the circumstances. Through this, The Lightning Thief shows that normalcy has more to do with how one adapts to their circumstances than anything else—and that as people become more secure in their identities, no matter how normal or abnormal, they’re then able to go on and behave in heroic ways.

The Percy that readers meet at the start of the novel feels as far from normal and heroic as possible. His ADHD means that he struggles to pay attention in classes, while his dyslexia means that he does poorly on every test he takes. Teachers sigh at Percy and assign him detention after detention, which culminates in Percy’s expulsion from Yancy Academy at the end of the year. This isn’t unexpected for Percy, as the same thing has happened to him every year for the last several years. The only upside to this year is that Percy managed to make it all the way through the school year before getting expelled. On the whole, Percy feels lost, unmotivated, and as though he’s never going to succeed at anything but causing trouble.

However, when the Minotaur attacks Percy and Mom during their trip to the coast, supposedly killing Mom and injuring Percy’s best friend, Grover, Percy crosses onto the land owned by Camp Half-Blood and learns the truth of his birth: that he’s a demigod. Over the course of the next few weeks, as Percy settles in at camp and begins to train, he discovers that he only did so poorly in the mortal world because he’s not a normal mortal. Percy’s dyslexia is actually the product of being hardwired to read ancient Greek, while his ADHD is a useful feature that allows him to notice more things than most people, making him a better fighter in combat. Learning these things helps Percy put past experiences into context. For instance, he suddenly understands why he feels like he kept seeing things that nobody else could—he really was seeing these things, since monsters have been after him for a year. Learning about himself also helps Percy understand that normalcy is relative. In the mortal world, Percy is an anomaly and is set up to fail. In the world of the gods, however, all of those seemingly negative qualities mean that he’s the perfect candidate for a hero’s quest.

Once Percy discovers that his father is Poseidon, the god of the sea, he’s assigned to one such quest: to recover Zeus’s thunderbolt, which was stolen during the gods’ Winter Solstice meeting and is supposedly sitting in the Underworld with Hades, Zeus and Poseidon’s underappreciated and jealous brother. By embarking upon this quest, Percy takes on the role of a classic Greek hero. However, Percy doesn’t necessarily see himself as a hero. In his mind, he may not be entirely normal—he’s a demigod, after all, and the only son of Poseidon at Camp Half-Blood—but he views himself as more of a normal 12-year-old boy than as a hero akin to Greek gods like Heracles, Perseus, or Jason. The idea that he’s a hero never quite settles with Percy. It’s this very sense of apathy and discomfort in regards to the idea of being a hero that ultimately allows Percy to be heroic, and it also enables Percy to truly accept that all of the things that caused him to struggle in the mortal world are actually assets. Percy may exhibit normal 12-year-old behavior by falling prey to Medusa’s sedative-laced hamburgers and talking back to Ares, the god of war, but his quick reflexes (the result of ADHD) mean that he’s able to successfully fend off Ares in a swordfight and to complete his quest.

Even after successfully completing his quest, returning Zeus’s thunderbolt, and meeting Poseidon for the first time, Percy still doesn’t feel entirely like a hero. He is, after all, staring down a new school in the mortal world for the next year, as well as the guarantee that monsters will continue to pursue him while he’s not in the safe space created at Camp Half-Blood. However, Percy nevertheless leaves camp with the important understanding that he’s not just a horrible kid destined for a life of failure. Rather, even if he might not yet entirely think of himself as a hero, when he embraces the things that make him different from his mortal peers, Percy can do great things and even save the world.