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where he came from. This search for personal identity is a powerful force and usually focuses on the hero’s parentage. Here, Percy discovers he is the son of Poseidon, the lord of the ocean (interestingly, the ocean is usually a symbol of the unconscious and of the feminine).
    During this stage the hero tries to grow up too quickly: becomes cocky, arrogant, or overly prideful, and thinks he is mature before he really is; he usually makes important decisions based on this false assumption. What success he finds at this point is based on some false power or outside agency (Aladdin had his genies).
    Very soon he will have to go it alone, but right now he is still not seeing clearly and wholly. His relationships with others suffer. He makes enemies easily. And he does not complete crucial lessons, trying to leapfrog ahead in an impatience to prove himself—a trait that reveals to the discerning reader how unready he still is, despite the fact that he can now talk the talk and walk the walk.

Stage 3: The central crisis
    Suddenly, everything goes south. The hero is plunged into despair and hopelessness, made worse by his former bravado and high hopes; he experiences a brush with death, symbolic or otherwise (E.T. “dies”; Frodo lapses into a deathlike stupor; Cedric Diggory is murdered in
front of Harry while he is symbolically crucified). This stage represents the danger of discovering (or starting to discover) one’s true identity: As I said earlier, becoming oneself is always seen as a crime against the masses, an act of rebellion against the establishment.
    And “punishment” quickly follows.
    Percy is plunged into the middle of a war between petulant gods, and must set out on an almost suicidal quest for which he is far from ready. He encounters several symbolic deaths and has close shaves with real ones, as in the deadly confrontation with the Mother of Monsters, Echidna.
    Here, Riordan carefully crafts the psychological development of his young protagonist: The only way to survive is for Percy to have faith in himself, or rather in the “new self” or identity that he has so recently discovered. This sudden realization that he really does have some innate power, that he really is a demigod after all, significantly occurs in a very high place, the Gateway Arch—from where he can see in all directions.

Stage 4: Independence and the final ordeal
    The hero survives the central crisis, having faced “death” and emerged from it changed. This is the final test through which his transformation into his new self takes place, though this new self will still have to be tested in a climactic confrontation with the darkest figure in the story.
    In all the recent stages, Percy has been discovering the importance of seeing clearly. This not only involves gaining a better understanding of what drives his two companions, but also in penetrating the disguises of the monsters. As each new threat unfolds, he sees through the assumed identity of the monster more swiftly than before. He is growing up.
    And that, of course, makes him an even bigger threat.
    Percy is now very much on his own. Like Aladdin after his princess has been kidnapped, like Harry in the cemetery, Percy must
stand on his own two feet and become the master of his own powers. To do this, he must “see” himself clearly, not just others, and know his own strengths and weaknesses.

Stage 5: Final union, completion, and fulfillment
    In a series, you don’t get to this final stage till the last book (unless the “completion” is to be dramatically overturned at the start of the next one). Not only can each book in a series follow the Rags to Riches plotline, but so can the series as a whole. In this sense, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire represents the central crisis of the series, which is why Harry is separated from everyone else in the maze and has a very real brush with death: his own, and