Thursday, March 23, 2017

What myth are they referring to in chapter 15?

In chapter 15 of The Lightning Thief, Ares asks Percy, Annabeth, and Grover to retrieve his shield from a ride called "The Thrill Ride O' Love" at the Waterland water park. When the three arrive at the park and find the ride, they enter to retrieve the shield. They travel through a tunnel and find a pink and white boat in the middle of an empty pool, surrounded by Cupid statues. The shield is inside the boat. Percy and Annabeth enter the pool to retrieve it. When Percy tries to grab it, he touches a substance that is like a cobweb, setting off a trap. The heads of the Cupid statues fall off, revealing cameras, and a voice comes over the loudspeaker saying that they will be filmed and broadcast to Olympus in one minute. As they try to escape, the Cupid statues begin to fire arrows, and then small mechanical spiders begin to fill the pool.This trap is based on a trap that Hephaestus set up to catch Aphrodite, his wife, when he found out she was cheating on him with Ares. Hephaestus was told about the affair by Helios, the god of the sun, who had seen Aphrodite and Ares in bed together. Hephaestus, a master craftsman, created a trap for the two. He made an unbreakable net that would spring up from the bed and trap them. The next time Aphrodite and Ares were in the bed together, they triggered the trap and the net closed around them. Hephaestus then entered the bedroom, along with some of the other Olympian gods, to the embarrassment of the two lovers. Eventually Hephaestus released the two, and they fled in disgrace.It is clear that Rick Riordan had the above myth in mind when he crafted chapter 15, "A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers." In Riordan's version, Ares somehow knew about the trap and sent Percy and company in so that he would avoid the humiliation that he experienced in ancient Greek mythology.

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