Gods and Parents

Some time ago I reviewed the first three books in Rick Riordan's series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I recently finished the fifth book in the pentalogy, and I would like to add something to my review.

First, I reiterate my kudos to Riordan for struggling honestly with the social-emotive culture of abandonment that many of this generation's youth experience. As the fifth Olympians book comes to its stormy climax, we discover that the central crisis of the narrative is, in fact, whether the gods--who are the parents of our heroes--will take an active role in the life of their children.

In the fifth book, The Last Olympian, the question gets a finer point on it: Will the gods help their children save the world, or will our adolescent heroes have to do it on their own, abandoned by their divine progenitors?

The answer to both questions--narrative and meta-narrative--is, Yes and No.

With this answer Riordan harmonizes faithfully with our present world and simultaneously fails to strike a significant note of hope for the next generation. We discover that the great desire of the heroes is to be remembered by their god-parents, and for this they struggle and fight and plead. This yearning to be claimed as belonging to the heritage of the gods runs through the sub-story of every hero in this series. However, observant readers of Riordan's novellas will detect a deeper and less articulate need--a need which also resonates with greater power for our world.

Youth need not only to know who their parents are (to get a last name, as it were), but they need also to know that their parents are walking with them in life. They need not just knowledge, but presence. Wisdom prevents us from advocating parents who believe they are best friends with their children; but the same alerts us to the need not only for official pedigree but also for present involvment.

Riordan's narrative offers the hope that perhaps the teenage heroes will live in the full knowledge of who their divine parents are; but this does not cancel or cure the fact that the god-parents remain powerfully absent from their children's lives. And we--readers and real-world people--need a hope that will cure this latter problem.

Perhaps Riordan cannot see that hope; or perhaps he is preparing us for greater things in his next series. But for us and our children, for now, we need this higher hope: that our children may be given not just last names, but also the living presence of parents. It is not enough to be claimed; we must also be loved.

Let's hope the Greek gods figure it out next time.

~emrys