Percy Jackson rant: politics of the Underworld

are you going up or down?

I’ve always been ghoulishly fascinated by theories of the afterlife. I can never get enough stories about heaven and hell, the Greek/Roman underworld, etc. I wonder what the appeal might be? Maybe having an idea of what to expect after death is comforting?

I’ve finally gotten through Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The Inferno was never a problem. It’s sort of exciting and disturbing, which makes it an easy read. Purgatory starts to lose me and by the time Dante travels to heaven, I’m usually bored witless. This read, I got a copy in prose rather than verse, which helped. I also skimmed the last book. There’s something so invigorating about the violent excesses and anti-Catholic attacks in book one. No wonder they banished Dante from Florence while the poem remained a best-seller for centuries.

I used to be in love with the novels of Piers Anthony until I finally quit him when I decided he was a homophobe. That said, his Incarnations of Immorality series is incredibly fun, what with regular people who become the Incarnations of abstract concepts like “Time,” “Death,” and “God.” T.V. has some amazing programs that deal with this stuff, too. I like “Dead Like Me” though I think that I might be the only one in America! “Reaper” is great, too, but my all-time-favorite has to be “Charmed!” Those witch sisters and all of their boyfriends are smoking hot; they’ve got a huge house in San Francisco with no apparent money problems; and, no matter how messed up things get, they’re always smelling like roses by the end. That’s a dream!

There’s something puzzling about the Percy Jackson series. Just how do you explain the Greek gods surviving for millennia as the heart of Western Civilization when it’s obvious that Christianity, Judaism and to a large extent Islam have been so fundamental in transforming our culture from the ancient classical period?

The Greeks had it worked out totally differently. In their metaphysics, everyone ends up in the Underworld eventually. Sort of like the Christian theories that sprouted up later, you might get punished or rewarded though more often than not, nothing much happened. Sometimes you’re offered a new life and a return to Earth after drinking from the River Lethe. That’s a novelty that the West has rejected. Too bad I say. I’d love to come back as a professional athlete or winemaker or something. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Rick Riordan sort of takes the whole classical Underworld and modernizes it. I’ve already written that it makes perfect sense to put the main access point to the place in West Hollywood. I love the little details in The Lightning Thief. Who’d have thought to make Charon have an obsession with Italian designer suits? And having an “EZ DEATH” lane to improve traffic flow into the place seems brilliant! It’s the last commute most of us ever need make. May as well make it simple! Though if we can believe what’s written, it’s a complex bureaucratic mess with way too much congestion. Hades’ exasperation with the crowds on the Plains of Erebus and how we learn at then end of The Battle of the Labyrinth that he uses Daedalus’ engineering skills to improve traffic flow seems just like the kind of modern highway planning that CalTrans is always talking about in the news at home to help folks improve access to San Francisco from the East Bay.

Death is a funny topic that can be uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why Hades’ kids don’t have a house at Camp Half-Blood. Who’d want to live next door to someone who might summon an army of zombies and ghosts to bother you if they’re annoyed by your loud music or something? It’s pretty unfair to Bianca and Nico. It’s not like it’s their fault that their dad is ruler of the Underworld. Percy’s right to force the gods’ hands on that one. Plus it helps keep Rachel from becoming a vegetable like Luke’s mom.

I’m wondering about the part in The Last Olympian when the Titans are finally vanquished and the gods are doling out rewards to the surviving heroes. Artemis makes a big deal about her dead Hunters, sort of pressing Hades to let their spirits into Elysium. If it weren’t so serious and disturbing, it would be almost comical. His response? “Okay…I’ll streamline their application process.” The Underworld is full of bureaucrats, just like on the “surfaceworld!”

Really though, isn’t that sort of fixing the game? Aren’t you supposed to be evaluated for your accomplishments and failures when you “go on” to the next life? To simply manipulate the result is troubling. It calls into question the entire basis for the Underworld and its division of the spirits. Perhaps Daedalus’ new role as the Architect of the Underworld is ambiguous; is it a punishment or a reward? It does seem a bit self-serving on Hades’ part, either way. If you look at it, aren’t the Titans eternally punished because they were the losers in the original war with the gods? If it had gone the other way, I suppose that Kronos would still be digesting the Olympians and he would rule. In either case, it’s all politics, politics and more politics. That doesn’t seem fair to me at all.

If I was confronted with the task of assigning a spot in the Underworld for Luke, I’m not sure where I’d put him. He did side with Kronos against the West but by the end he’s praised as “the hero” of the prophecy. Would you ship him off to Elysium with Beckendorf, or to rot eternally in Tartarus? More challenging still, where would you send Ethan Nakamura?