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Parallels Between The Odyssey and The Sea of Monsters

Rick Riordan is the author of a series based upon Greek mythology called Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a story about the hero Percy Jackson finding himself entwined in the still-present world of myth. Among many of his adventures, Percy runs into many characters that closely resemble characters from ancient myth, retold in the style of Riordan to fit current-day readers. Sheila Murnaghan, writer of the article "Classics for Cool Kids", states that "These books [...] aim attract their readers with the same jokey, parodic, modernizing presentation of Greek gods and heroes that we saw in the Myth-O-Mania books." Murnaghan also writes that these mythological figures are "modernized and Americanized". In one of Riordan's books, "The Sea of Monsters", there are a few characters that Percy runs into that highly resemble people from the Odyssey, the Greek epic by Homer, and represent some of the concepts that Murnaghan talks about.

C.C. and Circe

In The Sea of Monsters, C.C. is a witch from Greek Mythology. In the story, C.C. runs a spa and resort for women in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, and any man that comes to the island is turned into a guinea pig. Percy and Annabeth arrive on this island after escaping an exploding submarine, the CSS Birmingham. When they do, Annabeth is taken away for a makeover, while Percy goes with C.C. When Percy goes to her office, she gives him a milkshake to drink, which turns him into a guinea pig. C.C. then takes Percy and throws him in a cage with other guinea pigs, who later turn out to be pirates. Annabeth confronts C.C. after her makeover, and finds that C.C. is a nickname for her real name, Circe. Once revealed, Annabeth uses magical multivitamins given to them by Hermes to make herself immune to C.C.'s magic and turn all of the guinea pigs back to human in order to save Percy. Annabeth and Percy are able to escape, while the pirates who were also guinea pigs ransack the resort.

In Greek epic, Circe is a sorceress seen in Homer's Odyssey who lived on an island called Aeaea that was full of exotic animals, and she is one of many challenges Odysseus overcomes during his return home. Circe is famous for being hospitable to men, then turning them into pigs after she has drugged them. When Odysseus arrives, he sends half of his men to inspect the island. After they are received by the hospitality of Circe, she turns all of them but one into pigs and sends them into a pig pen. Eurylochus, the one who escaped, returns to Odysseus to tell the tale. Odysseus then goes off by himself to confront Circe, but before he arrives, Hermes stops him to give him advice for defeating Circe. He gives him a magical root called Moly (herb) to protect him from her magic, and instructs him on how to overcome her so that she will turn his men back into humans. Once Odysseus confronts Circe, she serves him food and wine and then attempts to turn him into a pig, but because of the Moly, Odysseus is immune to her magic. Then, Odysseus jumps forward at her with his sword drawn and threatens to kill her unless his men are restored to humans, to which Circe complies and allows all of his crew to stay on her island for some time. Odysseus visits the island of Aeaea a second time after his Katabasis to the underworld in order to properly bury a member of his crew who died there, named Elpenor.

In Rick Riordan’s story, C.C. has tame exotic animals roaming about her island and uses magic to turn men into guinea pigs, much like Circe in the Odyssey, who instead turns them into normal pigs. In contrast, C.C. uses a milkshake to turn Percy into a guinea pig and is defeated by a female hero, Annabeth, who takes the multivitamin from Hermes; in the Odyssey, Circe uses drugged wine and a magic wand against men to turn them into pigs and is defeated by the male hero Odysseus with the root Moly from Hermes. Another difference is that C.C. in the Sea of Monsters claims her mother to be the goddess Hecate, while Circe claims her mother to be Perse (mythology) in the Odyssey.

Polyphemus

Another character that is brought into the story is Polyphemus, a cyclops that lives on an isolated island in the Bermuda Triangle where he keeps the Golden Fleece. In the story, Polyphemus captures a satyr named Grover and attempts to marry him, and later is confronted by Percy, Annabeth, and Clarisse, who wish to rescue their friend and take the Fleece from him. Polyphemus is first approached by Clarisse, who originally had the quest for returning the Fleece, and Polyphemus ties her up to keep her hostage and eat (he later decides to marry her and eat Grover instead). Percy and Annabeth come to the rescue to try to save Grover and Clarisse by Annabeth turning invisible with her magic Yankee's cap and pretending to be "Nobody", the name Odysseus uses in the Odyssey to trick Polyphemus the first time. Then, Percy and his friends hide under the bellies of the sheep of Polyphemus, using them to escape out of his cave. Later on, Tyson, Percy's cyclops half-brother, shows up to help defeat Polyphemus and retrieve the Fleece. Percy and Tyson are able to blind Polyphemus, and attempt to join their friends and sail away, but Clarisse taunts him, which allows Polyphemus to hear where they are and sink their ship by throwing a boulder. The heroes are saved by the hippocampus (mythology) Rainbow and his friends, who help them sail back to Camp Half-Blood.

Polyphemus is also a character seen in the Odyssey where he is another one of the challenges Odysseus must face in order to return home. In this story, Polyphemus captures the crew of Odysseus after they venture into his cave to explore. He traps them and begins to eat them, two at a time, keeping them trapped inside his cave. Odysseus defeats him by getting him drunk with a wine offered as a "guest gift", and then stabs out his eye with a hot piece of timber. Odysseus is able to escape by hiding himself and his crew under the bellies of sheep, and also by telling Polyphemus that his name is nobody. Because of this, when Polyphemus calls for help from his fellow cyclopes, they hear him scream that nobody is attacking him, so they do not come to his aid. As Odysseus sails away, he yells out and taunts Polyphemus, saying "If any mortal man ever asks you who it was that inflicted upon your eye this shameful blinding, tell him that you were blinded by Odysseus, sacker of cities". After Odysseus says his true name, Polyphemus calls out to his father Poseidon to curse Odysseus, which causes many problems and delays for Odysseus on his return home.

Polyphemus from the Sea of Monsters shares some similarities with Polyphemus from the Odyssey. Both of these characters trap heroes in their cave and attempt to eat them, they are both bested by someone using the name "nobody", and heroes hide under the bellies of sheep in both versions. Some differences in the stories are that in the Sea of Monsters, Polyphemus has the Golden Fleece, attempts to marry a satyr and a human, and is successful in sinking the ship of the heroes. Meanwhile, in the Odyssey, Polyphemus does none of these things; however, he does have fellow Cyclopes on his island, unlike in the Sea of Monsters, and Polyphemus is blinded after becoming drunk in the Odyssey, which does not happen in the other story.

The Laestrygonians

At the beginning of the story, Percy is put into a dodge ball game against fellow students and a few unknown visitors from another school. Once the game begins, one of the visitors calls out Percy by his full name, Perseus Jackson, and then all the visitors are revealed to be monsters, or Laestrygonians by name. The Laestrygonians present in this game are Joe Bob, Marrow Sucker, Skull Eater, and two others who are not named. These monsters summon a new set of "dodge balls", which turn out to be cannon balls on fire, and start throwing them about the gym, destroying the building and shouting that they want to eat the humans. As Percy is attempting to dodge the flaming balls, Tyson ends up defending Percy and blocking some of the balls, while throwing the others back at their owners. After killing all of the monsters with the help of Tyson and his friend Annabeth, they are all able to escape.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his men accidentally sail up to the island of the Laestrygonians called Lamos before their encounter with Circe. Before reaching this island, Odysseus and his crew return to the land of Aeolus for the second time because of an incident. The crew thinks that a gift from Aeolus to Odysseus is a bag of treasures, so they decide to open it and take some for themselves, but end up finding out that the bag was full of winds to help Odysseus sail home. Because they release the bag, the ship is sent back to Aeolus, who casts them away from his island, telling Odysseus that "I have no right to see on his way, none to give passage to any man whom the blessed gods hate with such bitterness".

Once they are sent away, Odysseus and his men sail on for six days, and on the seventh day arrive at Lamos. Odysseus spots smoke rising up from the country, and sends some of his companions ahead to explore the land. These men find a girl drawing water, and she is the daughter of Antiphates, the king of Lamos. She takes them to her home, but the men are ambushed in the palace by Antiphates and his wife, and Antiphates snatches up one of the men to eat. The rest try to flee back to the ships, and the Leastrygonians pursue them by throwing large boulders at them and the ships. Men who were knocked down were speared and brought back to be eaten, and only Odysseus and his ship manage to escape the island.

In the Sea of Monsters, the Laestrygonians throw large balls and threaten to eat everyone, much like the Laestrygonians in the Odyssey. However, the Laestrygonians in the Odyssey are the only ones successful in eating people, and they also use spears to kill the people and drag them back to be eaten. They also use the daughter of Antiphates to lure the men to the palace. In the Sea of Monsters, the Laestrygonians are not successful in killing anyone, and all of them are destroyed by Percy, Tyson, and Annabeth.

Sources

• Homer. The Odyssey of Homer Translated and with an Introduction by Richmond Lattimore, Harper Perennial Modern Classics; New York, NY., Ltd. 2007. ISBN 978-0-06-124418-6
• Murnaghan, Sheila. Classics for Cool Kids: Popular and Unpopular Versions of Antiquity for Children, Classics World; 104.3 (2011): 339-353. Project MUSE. Web. <https://muse.jhu.edu/>.
• Riordan, Rick. Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters, Hyperion Books for Children; New York, NY., Ltd. 2007. ISBN 978-1-4231-0334-9