Percy Versus

Percy Versus

By: Elias Dorsey

            Authors Note: This writing piece is about how the book The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan, displays how it falls into the category of conflict resolution.

             Well, Percy Jackson was just an average teenager. Until one day his life was turned upside down by a teacher who wanted him dead, a Greek god who blamed him of stealing his most prized possession. All in one day. This book has a ton of different conflict, from person vs. person to person vs. society. This makes me wonder. What would you do if you were accused of being a thief by a god?

            If some were ever in that situation what would you think they would do? Probably avoid it for as long as possible. Not Percy though, even though he knows he wouldn’t dare commit such a heinous crime such as stealing from Zeus. That’s one conflict and its person vs. person. Percy knows that he didn’t steal it but Zeus insists that he did. This happened because the big three gods (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades) had sworn not to have kids with mortals more than 1000 years before. So when they found out Poseidon had a kid with a mortal 14 years ago, they knew he had broken the rule. So who better to blame the child who shouldn’t have been born?

            This is also the main conflict. There are several events that led up to this such as, the Greek camp has an oracle, and the oracle gives you a poem about what will happen in the future. She gave a prophecy that a young son of Poseidon would come to their camp. The thought it would never happen. Then it did. This resulted in the camp leader explaining to Percy that he was being blamed for stealing the master bolt.

            Little did they know, Hermes cabin leader (Luke) was working with an opposing force of the gods, the titans, and stole the master bolt then framed Percy for it. In the end, the conflict was resolved by Percy finding and returning the master bolt to Zeus and explaining that it wasn’t him. Zeus then offers Percy a position on Mt. Olympus. As a god.

            So just as a recap, Percy was born and his dad is Poseidon. That’s the first step. Percy comes to a camp where he is given a prophecy that he needs to go steal back the master bolt (which is thought to be held by Hades) and bring it to Zeus. So he did, and all the previous conflicts were resolved thus stopping a war between the gods. One questions remains. What would you do?