20 distractingly beautiful I hardly noticed the stallion-sized sea horse she
was riding.” Percy:281
4.1.4 Threshold Guardian
Threshold Guardians protect the special world and the secrets from the Hero, and provide essential tests to prove a Hero’s commitment and
responsibility. When the Hero reaches the Threshold Guardian he will not be permitted to pass easily. Some classic examples of Threshold Guardian are
Charon the boatman of the river styx, or Cerberus as the guardian of Hades lair. To get further through his journey, the hero must somehow pass them both.
Sometimes the Threshold Guardian is very recognizable because they are actually guarding a threshold. A good example of this is the Bridge-keeper in Monty
Python and the Holy Grail, the heroes must answer three questions before he will allow them to cross the bridge. It means that the Threshold guardian is not always
bad or evil. But the Threshold Guardians role can be said to always be antagonistic to the hero. The job of the Threshold Guardian is to get the hero to
rethink whether or not he wishes to proceed on this adventure. Minotaur that Hades sent to catch Percy is Per
cy’s first Threshold Guardian. Minotaur is huge and horned. It attacks Percy, Sally Jackson and
Grover as they try to get Percy safely to Half Blood Camp for the first time. The Minotaur catches Sally’s neck and makes her disappear, making Percy enraged.
Percy rips the Minotaur horn off and stabs him with it. “His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous
head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns-enormous black-and
white horns with points you just couldnt get from an electric sharpener
.” Percy :55 Rick Riordan uses the classic or the ancient heroes story as his basis on
writing this story. The other threshold guardians in Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief
come from the Greek creatures or classic stories, like Charon and Cerberus as the writer explains above. But in this story, Riordan draws those two creatures
in form of modern style creatures to make the story more interesting.
21 Charon is the boatman of styx. In Greek mythology, he was the ferryman
of the dead, an underworld spirit in the service of underworld god Hades. Charon transported the spirit in his skiff to a final resting place in Hades, the land of the
dead. Riordan in Percy Jackson : The Lightning Thief draws Charon as a very suave guy and wears a fancy Italian suit and cool looking shades. There is a huge
waiting list to get into the Underworld when Percy and his friends come to Charon’s lobby, and the only way to get on Charons boat is to bribe him. That is
exactly what Percy does. “He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-colored skin and bleached-
blond hair shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his
lapel under his nametag.
” Percy:296 Cerberus or Kerberos was the gigantic hound which guarded the gates
of Hades. He was posted to prevent ghosts of the dead from leaving the underworld. Cerberus was described as a three-headed dog with a serpents tail, a
mane of snakes, and a lions claws. Some say he had fifty heads, though this number might have included the heads of his serpentine mane. Riordan explains
Cerberus as such a cute little puppy. Cerberus guards the entrance to the underworld. Hes a ginormous doggy with three heads. His job is to sniff out the
living who might be trying to sneak into the underworld as like what Percy and his friends do.
“Id always imagined Cerberus as a big black mastiff. But he was obviously a purebred Rottweiler, except of course that he was twice
the size of a woolly mammoth, mostly invisible, and had three heads. ”
Percy:306
4.1.5 Allies or Sidekicks
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