#not percy choosing to sacrifice an unwilling participant to save manhattan as luke might have done

[bookplush]

no because the titan’s curse is absolutely steeped in sacrifice, from beginning to end. the book begins with dealing with the repercussions of thalia’s sacrifice being reversed, of her being present again and percy’s reaction to that. annabeth charges the manticore and gets herself chucked off a cliff in order to save thalia and percy, bianca sacrifices herself to allow the quest to continue, zoe sacrifices herself to save artemis.

and at the very end of the book there are two more sacrifices, one by thalia to spare annabeth and the other by percy to spare nico.

thalia chooses to join the hunters in order to prevent the destruction of olympus, yes. but the whole reason she wants to spare olympus in the first place is to save annabeth. she nearly joined luke earlier in the book, and only didn’t because she saw that he had hurt annabeth, that he wasn’t the luke she knew anymore. allowing kronos-- allowing luke-- to take olympus would be unleashing someone with the willingness to physically torture annabeth into full power, and thalia can’t let that happen. so she makes a sacrifice and joins the hunters.

and it is a sacrifice. i know the book paints it like something she wants, but frankly i don’t believe it. thalia was nearly as anti-olympus as luke was in the olden days. the whole reason they remained on their own for so long was because they tried to avoid anything to do with olympus for as long as possible. thalia has always wanted freedom from olympus, just like luke has. but she gives up that freedom to become a lifelong servant of an olympian (albeit one of the nicer ones), in order to save the demigods loyal to olympus. in order to save annabeth.

and then, only a few chapters later, percy makes the choice to take on the responsibility of the hero of the prophecy, in order to spare nico that same burden. percy has never wanted to be the hero, he just wanted to find a place where he fit in and felt normal-- remember how, in tlt, he hated being claimed as a son of poseidon, because suddenly he was yet again an outcast in the camp supposed to be for outcasts? but in order to spare nico the responsibility, he chooses it for himself, even though it is, in his words, the last thing he wants to do.

both thalia and percy give up something they want-- thalia her freedom, percy his chance at normalcy-- for the good of the world, but they both make those sacrifices in order to spare one specific person. its also interesting that thalia’s sacrifice is letting go of the duty of the prophecy, while percy’s is accepting it.

i was confused for a bit about why the titans curse, of all books, focuses so heavily on sacrifice. wouldn’t it make more sense for the last book in a series to be focused on sacrifice? why a random third book? but then i realized that the ability to make this choice is crucial for percy’s character development. the only reason percy is able to make the choice to take on the prophecy is that he has witnessed so many other sacrifices over the course of the book-- bianca, zoe, thalia-- and he now understands their necessity.

in the first three books, percy goes on the quests and saves the world and stuff, but it’s always just to save someone he personally cares about. in tlt it’s his mom, in som it’s grover, and in ttc it’s annabeth. but after ttc, percy’s motivations broaden. in botl he’s aiming to save the whole camp, and then in tlo he’s fighting for the whole of olympus, the whole world. percy’s ability to deliberately forgo his own desire for a normal life in favor of becoming the hero of the prophecy is what allows him to transition from the reluctant hero only here to save his friends we see in the first books, to the confident battle leader giving out orders to the whole camp that he becomes in botl and tlo.

*i also think it’s important to note that when i say sacrifice here, i mean personal sacrifice. the thing, in my opinion, that makes percy significantly different from luke is that luke believes the ends justify the means, and so hurting and killing mortals and other demigods (including ones he cares about, like annabeth) is justified. meanwhile, since percy values personal loyalty so much, he won’t make the decision to hurt or kill others just to meet his own goals, even if he thinks those goals will benefit everybody (like how he could’ve screwed that naiad over in botl to clean the stables, but he chose to come up with a different solution. he could’ve said “well saving camp is more important than saving this one naiad, needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, tough luck” but he didn’t). personal sacrifice is what percy learns to respect here, not sacrifice of the unwilling.

annabeth : thalia :: nico : percy