But though Mist may lift in a moment like that, it can and must descend again. Exactly how Mist works or why it breaks down at times is a bit unclear in the series—at least to this reader. Nevertheless, we do learn that, when it comes to gods moving among ordinary mortals, Mist seems to generate itself and always has, as Chiron explains to Percy: Read The Iliad. It’s full of references to the stuff. Whenever divine or monstrous elements mix with the mortal world, they generate Mist, which obscures the vision of humans. You will see things just as they are, being a half-blood, but humans will interpret things quite differently.
And though Mist does break down from time to time, apparently the gods (and demigods) have ways of playing Mr. or Ms. Fix-it. In The Titan’s Curse, the Mist seems not to be working properly when Percy and his friends enter Westover Hall. But with a snap of her fingers, Thalia manages to restore the Mist enough to allow Mrs. Gottschalk to believe that Percy, Thalia, and Annabeth are students at the school. Thalia’s ability surprises Percy, who learns that restoring Mist is a skill Chiron could have taught him. Thus we learn that Mist can indeed be manipulated.
For instance, no one present during the giants’ attack at Percy’s gym remembers what really happened once the crisis is over. Mist’s intervention restored order and translated the chaotic events into ones ordinary mortals could comprehend: namely, that Percy was some crazed bomb-wielding maniac who tried to blow up his school. Bad for Percy, but good for the psyche of the mortal witnesses.
Mist lifts or fails or only half-works several times during the series (one particularly dramatic instance is at the St. Louis Gateway Arch in The Lightning Thief), but for the most part the Mist holds fast, gods and their shenanigans remain invisible, and the system works.
Why Some Days Just Feel Like They’re Going to Be Very Bad Days
Even with the Mist in good working order, the presence of any one of at least the big-league gods (Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, or Aphrodite, for example) does seem to affect the general atmosphere and moods experienced by mortals.
And they affect Percy. When Ares first encounters Percy in the Denver diner in The Lightning Thief, Percy tells us “bad feelings started boiling in my stomach. Anger, resentment, bitterness. . . . I wanted to pick a fight with somebody. Who did this guy think he was?” Interestingly, the presence of the god awakens subconscious emotions, fears, or tendencies. Violence is, after all, said to beget violence—or at least feelings of revenge.
In our world, it’s hard to know where some moods—particularly the bluesy, down, or bad ones—actually come from. We all know what it’s like: Some days you wake up feeling particularly glum or angry or annoyed for no apparent reason. Your mom says, “Hey did you get out on the wrong side of the bed or something?” (I, myself, have never figured out exactly which is the “right” side of the bed!) Everything from that first buzz of the alarm clock to the last few minutes before you go to bed that night just seems to go from bad to worse. You get to school with mismatched socks (or shoes—believe me, that happened to a friend of mine once!); you leave your fave lunch box on the bus; you forget to bring your homework or you discover the cat really did eat that book report; to top it off, the class bully starts a text message smear campaign making fun of your mismatched socks!
Whatever it is that’s gone wrong, I suspect that what side of the bed you got out on has little to do with it. In Riordan’s world at least some of it could be chalked up to the presence of Hermes—a prankster if there ever was one. And Ares might be prodding that bully to nastier exploits than usual. If he needles him hard enough, those text messages might turn into a physical pummeling during an afterschool scrimmage session right under the eyes of a conveniently distracted coach. But there is an upside or two. Maybe Apollo decides to help you wreak revenge on the bully. Or the sun god, who is also the god of poetry, wafts into English class on a beam of sunlight and inspires Mr. Bully to jump up and recite a really, really, bad haiku—in praise of you!
If you don’t know what’s going on, it can be confusing. Percy experiences this himself when he enters the Tunnel of Love, touches Aphrodite’s scarf, and momentarily turns to mush.
The Greek gods have always reveled in the joys, sorrows, and tragedies of mortals. The atmosphere we breathe is charged with their qualities, good and bad, the love as well as the hate. Just read The Iliad and The Odyssey. Sometimes, however, the gods don’t just change the atmosphere by their presence. Often they instigate all sorts of trouble and human upheavals. Homer sure knew what he was talking about: His gods regularly fall in love with humans, battle over humans, and, over eons, promote terrible rivalries and wars between bands of humans. It’s not out of the question that they would continue to do so.
The stories recounted in The Iliad and The Odyssey illustrate some particularly annoying habits of these deities, habits that make them less than good neighbors. After all, their favorite pastime seems to be interfering in human affairs. Twenty-first-century America provides ample fodder for playing out—through human or half-human pawns—their eternal family spats and feuds. And perhaps the supersized negative feelings the activities Riordan’s transplanted gods generate also spawn much of the violence in our world today.
Could it be that Ares was frolicking amid the carnage in Percy’s hometown on 9/11? Which brings up the question, why might Ares be in New York, as Riordan suggests, to begin with?
New York, New York: Great Place to Visit, But Why Live Here?
The simple answer is that all the gods in Percy Jackson and the Olympians have, like hoards of others, immigrated to America, and their headquarters is New York City. Why New York? I doubt it’s because they are either Mets or Yankees fans.
Riordan’s explanation is in keeping with his mastery of Greek mythology and the culture of Ancient Greece. As Chiron tells Percy when he arrives at Camp Half-Blood, New York is simply their home base. Today’s Mount Olympus is on the 600th floor (right, that’s not a typo) of the Empire State Building. The divine abode hasn’t been in Greece for millennia. Chiron explains that Western Civilization is “a collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it.” The whole Western worldview first flowered in Ancient Greece, then moved to Rome and eventually beyond as time passed and the center of power moved. Since gods are immortal, they don’t die out with the passing of civilizations or kingdoms. Instead as power shifts in the Western world, they are forced to relocate to the empire or country that’s currently dominating the scene—which in the twenty-first century is the good old USA. And the only place to set up their home base is the nexus of that power—in this case, the Big Apple.20
New York City happens to be the best location for those gods to settle for many reasons. First of all, it’s one of the most high-energy places on the planet—some would say too high-energy, since the city is purported never to catch a night’s sleep. Nothing in New York City seems to move slowly enough to be brought into focus—walking the streets and avenues of this town, there’s a distinctive feeling that everything’s caught in fast-forward. The gods seem to thrive on this frenetic energy, even if most of the mortals don’t, and the half-bloods among us no doubt walk around distracted and endlessly confused. All this excess energy is readily available to fuel family feuds, and certainly must help power up the strife the gods continue to sow among humans.
Now another reason New York, New York, would feel like home-sweet-home to these Ancient Greek deities: New York isn’t just frantic, it’s over-the-top wealthy—the perfect place to indulge in all the heady high-end perks of the high life.
Personally I suspect that while the gods are the very bedrock of Western Civilization and need to settle in its power-base, they also can’t stomach anything less than living the good life in ultimate luxury. I can’t picture Aphrodite in a third-world country, can you? Now Saks Fifth Avenue is another thing.
The idea of the gods living among us mere mortals is scarcely new, at least as far as the Ancient Greek deities are co
ncerned. Look up Mount Olympus in the dictionary—it is indeed “home of the gods,” but it also has a real geographic location: Northern Thessaly.
Michael Grant points out in Myths of the Greeks and Romans that though the gods don’t live with ordinary people, they do live “on, or not too far from the earth.” And in Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, Edith Hamilton says, “The exact spot where Aphrodite was born of the foam could be visited by any ancient tourist; it was just offshore from the island of Cythera.” She also says that Pegasus lived in a real stable in Corinth.
Similarly, Percy and his friends finally locate Nereus in The Titan’s Curse in San Francisco. The ancient sea god is disguised (of course) as a homeless man, fishing on a wharf. So if you want to find the old man of the sea himself, book a vacation in the Bay Area and check him out while you’re there.
Much like the immortals of the Greek era, Riordan’s deities have a home base on Mount Olympus but can basically hang out anywhere they want. So Percy’s first encounter with Ares occurs outside a Denver, Colorado, diner. Ares, as far as we know in the series, doesn’t live in Denver. His presence in the Mile High City has one purpose: to talk to (and trick) Percy.
Do We Really Want to Bring Them a Housewarming Present?
While wondering why these divinities have deigned to grace us with their presence, we might also ask ourselves if we should really welcome their presence here.
The gods do provide convenient scapegoats. It would be nice to be able to blame all contemporary conflicts and injustices on the whims of disinterested gods. Maybe the violence that bloats our cable news channels is not triggered by acts of ordinary mortals: Maybe monster hags and raging war gods are causing the whole mess to begin with. After his bus to the West Coast blows up not far from the George Washington Bridge in The Lightning Thief, Percy voices just this sentiment in his narration: “It’s nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong.”
When the gods moved to New York, they came with plenty of baggage: their feuds, their wars, their Olympian-sized dysfunctional families; their inability to keep promises and vows (particularly of matrimony). Like true rock stars they’ve paraded onto the scene with their entire entourage: monsters in the form of Furies, Cyclopes, the Hydra, the Ophiotaurus; various spirits (naiads, dryads, and satyrs, among others); magical beings like the Gray Sisters and their taxi service; and let’s not forget the Oracle. In fact, the whole assortment—or at least a generous sampling—of weirdoes that populated the mythical realms of Ancient Greece turn up in the course of the series.21 And these weirdoes don’t just “turn up” and make cameo appearances. Far from being window dressing or sidekicks, this motley crew provides much of the action on all of Percy’s quests.22
In light of all the baggage these gods bring with them, I find myself wondering, is the presence of these gods such a good thing? The answer is, that’s a really bad question. First of all, in the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, they are already here, and are having too good a time to plan on leaving soon. Secondly, when it comes to sending these inconvenient neighbors back to where they came from, we can’t. We, and possibly those very gods themselves, just don’t have the choice.
It All Boils Down to This Thing Called Free Will
Freedom of choice is something we usually take for granted—until we look a little more closely at what it, and free will, really means. At first glance it means you can decide to take this road or that; you can do your homework or not; if you’re Percy, you can decide to search for Zeus’ lightning bolt or not.
But as it turns out, the whole idea of freedom of choice and free will is one of those things that philosophers have pondered probably since the first cave men gathered around the campfire and began to chew over life’s important questions—the kind of questions with no definite answer, like what came first, the chicken or the egg? No one really knows.
Do we have the ability to choose our direction in life or does fate or destiny choose our path for us? The answer is both. We almost always have a choice about what we do, but at the same time we are usually making that choice in a situation that we have no power to change.
The idea of being free to choose what happens to you sure seems simple enough. You choose to do your homework, or to play a video game. But if you’re a student, do you really have a choice? In one sense you do. You can choose to skip your homework assignment. But if you do choose not to finish that book report due at 9 A.M. tomorrow, you still have to deal with the consequences, those consequences—be they detention or a bad grade—limit your freedom of choice. You definitely have no choice about being a student going to school—your age and your circumstance are not under your control.
So the situation we are put in—like being in school or being born a half-blood—is something we generally have no ability to change. How we deal with that situation—that’s another story.
Throughout the Percy Jackson series, time and again, Percy finds himself in dire straits (mostly) not of his own choosing. It’s how he chooses to deal with it that makes his story a real page-turner.
Percy didn’t choose to be a half-blood. But he does choose to go on all those quests that keep almost getting him killed, right? Take the quest to retrieve Zeus’ lightning bolt: He could have said no. Or could he? Part of the reason he went was to see his mother again; could he really have chosen not to go, given who he is?
Another question: Sally’s “death” at the hand of the Minotaur on the outskirts of Camp Half-Blood seems unavoidable while it’s happening, but I wonder, was it really?
There are two ways of looking at Sally’s (apparent) death. There were two possible outcomes to the standoff with the Minotaur: Either Sally would survive and Percy would die, or Sally would die so Percy would live. You could say she chose to sacrifice herself for Percy of her own free will. On the other hand, perhaps the gods put her in that very situation where she would be forced to make that choice, a situation where she had no choice but to act as any mother would, and sacrifice her own life to save her son’s. When you look at it that way, the gods may have been using a mother’s love to propel Percy into a situation where he was forced to go on a quest and do their bidding.
But why would the gods even bother to lure Percy into their world and make him their own go-to guy?
The gods have a problem. As Chiron tells us, they can’t cross certain borders or trespass on each other’s realms; heroes, however, can go wherever they want. So when the gods’ squabbles lead them into other gods’ territories, they need heroes to do their dirty work. Heroes are made weapons of the gods, vehicles through which the gods wreak their vengeance. Keeping that in mind, it makes sense that the gods would throw Percy and his mother into a no-win situation if they thought it would motivate Percy to help them out.
So the gods saved Sally at the last moment in order to motivate Percy, whose love and loyalty to those closest to him underscore almost every crucial decision he makes—whether it be brilliant or disastrous. Does Percy have a choice when it comes to what Athena tells him is his fatal flaw—personal loyalty? All of us have flaws, though maybe all aren’t exactly fatal. Fear, pride, over-optimism, jealousy, greed, a too-trusting heart—these are all flaws I know I’ve glimpsed some in family and friends. (As for myself, I’ll take the Fifth.) The problem is these flaws limit the range of choices we can make, and so the gods can use them to manipulate us.
No One’s Perfect, Especially Not the Greek Gods
When it comes to flaws, the Greek gods themselves seem to be full of them. Unlike the Egyptians or Babylonians, “the ancient Greeks made the gods in their own image,” Edith Hamilton tells us. And since these gods were supposed to resemble mortal everyday Greeks, gods are far from perfect. In fact they often behave like noisy, sometimes nasty, mortal neighbors.
If Mr. Greek Everyman and his wife had a particularly loud marital spat, they’d shout accusations and threats at each other. Maybe the guy was
as capable of domestic abuse as Percy’s creepy stepdad, Gabe. Gods made in the image of the guy-next-door mirrored the same set of seriously bad but woefully familiar very human behaviors. Except if Hera caught Zeus on a date with his latest fling and hurled threats at him, he could choose to hurl his thunderbolt back, or remind her of how he punished her once by dangling her upside down in the clouds. Same spat, but on a mega-scale.
Though the Greek gods were basically souped-up versions of Ancient Greek mortals themselves—warts and all—those warts generally were on their characters and souls, NOT on their faces. The Greeks saw their gods as more—not only more violent or vengeful, but also more beautiful or brave or fierce or powerful versions of themselves. They always gave them physical, and sometimes psychological, qualities which they admired and to which they could also aspire. The gods were not there just to entertain and instruct through bad tabloid-worthy antics but to inspire their devotees to reflect the occasional divine goodness in their own mortal lives.
One of the “better” qualities of the Greek gods was their extraordinary physical beauty. This should not surprise us—after all, everyone loves looking at a pretty face. However, as much as (if not more than) our own modern Hollywood-inspired culture, the Ancient Greeks valued a beauty crafted from ideals of physical human perfection.
Whereas divinities of other ancient cultures are often depicted as fantastic semi-monstrous figures made up of creative assemblages of animal parts, the Greek gods were depicted as extremely beautiful (in the case of the goddesses) or well-toned and muscular (in the case of gods). I bet they would have laughed the goddess of wisdom out of town if she’d looked more like a goddess of another, perhaps earlier, culture. Imagine their reaction if, instead of the elegant, self-possessed Athena, wisdom manifested itself as a cross between a crocodile and a koala bear. (I know—there were no koala bears anywhere near Greece. Still, it’s an interesting combo!)