Percy Jackson and the Hero's Journey

After looking closely at what the Hero's Journey (or monomyth) is last week, this week are beginning to look more closely at our reading for this unit, the orgin story of Percy Jackson in The Lightning Thief. Now that our students are schooled in the template of a hero's journey that comes up again and again in books, movies, and ancient myths and stories, they are now ready to apply their knowledge to a modern novel. Over the course of the rest of this month, we will be comparing Percy Jackson's story with the stages and acrchetypes found in the Hero's Journey, and students will decide if Percy follows the traditional quest of a hero or if the author deviated from this pattern when writing the book. Their observations will be recorded in a table found on the worksheet below.

See also this week's discussion questions for the book. They give insight into the answer to this big question for our unit. An even better question is "Why do people like stories of hero's that follow this familiar pattern?" I hope to explore that more as the year goes on.