Lightning Thief Archetype

Thesis: Though from different mythologies, Twilight and The Lightning Thief share an archetypal pattern that requires a mentor’s guidance; as the protagonist becomes aware of a previously unknown parallel world, a mentor surfaces to escort along the path of knowledge and survival.

In The Lightning Thief and Twilight, different experiences occur within both main characters Bella Swan and Percy Jackson. Both selections follow the path of the archetypal pattern of a mentor’s guidance. The mentor’s guidance plays a major role in both selections in outlining important aspects of the mythologies and parallel world. While Percy and Bella are not familiar to anything other than human kind, they both find a way to become aware of their future surroundings.

The basic mentor pattern of the hero’s journey is reveled as they start to discover their different worlds.
In Twilight, Bella swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad and that’s when she meets her new friend Jacob Black (Taylor, p1).

Bella starts out at a new high school where she is warned about the mysterious Edward Cullen. People don’t really know why he is so pale and has been at that school for more than any high student should be. Bella has many questions and that’s when her new friend Jacob comes in and helps guide her in the path of finding out that Edward Cullen is a vampire.

While in The Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson has been sent off to a boarding school where his mom put him from him finding out that his dad is a Greek king in the land of Crete. Percy ends up getting kicked out of his boarding school and his forced to be sent with his father where he discovers the new Greek mythology world he never knew of with the help of his best friend Grover, who is a

satyr.
Bella and Percy have very much in common when it comes to the mythology world. In this stage starts the departure pattern. This is where Bella and Percy start to notice all these weird things that people are doing and their true innocence of not knowing what is going on peeks through. Even though Bella is dealing with blood sucking creatures and Percy is dealing with Greek gods, they both follow that archetypal pattern of innocence. Bella and Percy are very new and unfamiliar to what they see and are told by their guides. With Bella, she really has to search up the signs that she Edward is giving to her in order for her to finally find out that he is a vampire (Taylor, p.1, L7&8). Once she confront him about his situation, he ends up revealing to Bella that the reason he avoided her on the first day was because of the scent of her blood and his temptation to want her. With Percy, it all happens at school one day when he started to notice that things he would touch would change. When he was tossed a pen by one of his teachers and it turned into a sword. He ended up killing his teacher Mrs. Dodds. During that time, Percy ends up going back home with his mother and then finds himself awake in an infirmary at camp half-blood, where Grover tells him he is a demigod, meaning half mortal and half god. That’s the first time he truly finds out. His best friend Grover explains a lot more to him about the Greek world he never knew of.
Like everyone, we all go through obstacles in life and we have to face those test/trials; for Percy and Bella, there trials were very much complicated. Both characters go through what is called the fulfillment stage. Both characters are on the hunt to find out what it is that everyone knows about but they don’t. For example, everyone knows the latest gossip about someone and you don’t, so you do all this research and digging until you find out what it is everyone knew about. Same thing goes for Bella and Percy, they go through the fulfillment in stage in doing all this digging and searching for the vampires and the Greek gods.
After all of that, this is where the mentors come into play. Percy and Bella need that guidance to help them along the way in processing what they have just discovered. For Bella, that would be Jacob. He’s the one who knows about the Vampires because Bella later finds out that Jacob is a werewolf. While with Percy, his best friends Grover and Athena are the ones who will help him through all of this because Grover is a satyr and Athena is the goddess of wisdom, meaning they are apart of the Greek world. This is also where Percy finds out that his dad Poseidon, the king of all Greek gods.
In Twilight, Bella does a lot of digging in trying to find out what really is going on with Edward and why he is acting strange around her. One of the main things that Bella really got confused about was when she was nearly ran over by a classmate’s van and Edward swarmed in and pushed the van with his bare hand (Taylor, Para. 1). After this Bella decides to search online of what could be he cause as to how and why Edward can do that with his bare hands and why is he so pale. In the movie, Bella decides to go into the woods to lead Edward towards her, as they meet up there she starts to question him and he finally confesses that he is a vampire but has not fed on humans for the longest time and for her not to be worried. While in the Lightning Thief, Percy is just a normal regular kid when one day him and his mom are sleeping and then all of a sudden he is awoken at camp half-bold and he is told that he is a demi-god. After figuring out that he his half demi-god and that his father is Poseidon, he decides that he is going to go all over Los Angeles with his best friends Grover and Athena and try and find more people like him to get some insight and really understand how and why he is like that and why him. This is really when those mentors really start to develop both characters knowledge. They escort them along a path of knowing what they need to be aware of and how survive with all this. The guides not only are there for Bella and Percy as friends, but they are there to make sure they are okay in every situation that they may encounter.
Knowledge and survival is one of the main things the guides are providing for the Bella and Percy. How Grover and Athena provide that for Percy is by helping him understand that he is the half human half demi-god. They also help him understand that he needs to be familiar with all the different Greek gods that he will become to know. One thing that they really help him realize is that he is known as the “God of The Sea”, “Father of Horses”, etc. and Percy needs to be able to understand what he is capable of doing. With Bella, Jacob provides his knowledge and survival by basically telling her that all the vampires are bad and that she needs to stay away from all of them. Of course in every love movie the girl never listens. Another way Jacob helps her is by letting Bella know all the Cullen’s background information and how they became vampires. Throughout the whole process, Jacob continues to tell Bella to stay away but she does not.
Now that Bella and Percy are aware of everything they need to know, this is when they are finally on their own and get to explore and see how they do.

Hanging around the Cullen’s leads Bella into some serious trouble. Sure the Cullen’s may be the nice ones, but that does not mean that there are not any bad ones around. Bella ends up finding herself in a conflict when these three vampires try to come and get her. In the end Jacob and Edward are there to rescue and save her from what could have ended really badly. For Percy, his best friends help him go on this adventure but just like Bella, he gets himself into a battle. As they are traveling and searching for what is like them, the run across the Furies attacking them. They are a group of Greek people who were targeting Percy. As for Percy and his friends, they are able to defeat them and complete their mission. Along the way they meet a ton of people who are like them and he discovers a whole new world that Percy wish he had known all along. Percy and Bella are very different but will always have that common background when it comes to the archetypal pattern of the mentor’s guidance and having that knowledge of the parallel

world.