2 immediately hands a quest to redeem himself from a crime he has never
committed. He has a relationship to other gods, or other gods call him by family names. Hades is repeatedly
called Percy’s uncle, Poseidon refers to Zeus as Percys uncle, and Ares calls Percy his cousin.
Percy Jackson is helped by his friends, a satyr a half donkey and half man called Grover and a daughter of Athena, Annabeth. Percy must journey
across the United States to catch a thief who has stolen the original weapon of mass destruction
– Zeus’ master bolt. Along the way, he must face a host of mythological enemies determined to stop him. Most of all, he must come to a
relation with a father he has never known, and an Oracle that has warned him of betrayal by a friend.
I am interested in analyzing Rick Jordan’s novel, Percy Jackson: The
Lightning Thief , because it offers the famous patterns of hero’s journey which are
similar with the other great story like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Lord of The Ring
, Matrix etc. Archetype in this thesis is reflected through how the author consciously or unconsciously writes the similar
patterns of the hero’s journey. Riordan is able to develop a modern wonderful journey based on the
Olympians or the old Greek gods and creatures in his novels, which have similar patterns of journeys with the other stories of the ancient myth heroes like Perseus
and Hercules. According to the explanations above, in order to study the patterns of
famous hero’s journey, this thesis entitled “An Analysis on the Monomyth through Rick Riordan
’s Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief.
1.2 Research Topic
Most of ancient heroic stories we know are reenactments of a common pattern. More recently it has become clear that all literature is made up of
repeated images and motives that are known as archetypes. An archetype is a kind of symbol, character type, or plot pattern that has ever recurred throughout
literature. The research topic in this thesis as the writer explained before is about the reenactments of a common pattern through the journey of the hero in Percy
3 Jackson: The Lightning Thief.
This research studies about the pattern and meaning of hero itself.
1.3 Research problems
Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief is one of the Percy series that are
famous like the stories of Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. They have a similarity where the reenactments of common pattern occur in their journey.
Their journey separates their life from the ordinary world to the unfamiliar special world for their quests, and then back to their home with an upgrade on their life.
Those patterns also have a similarity with the journeys of hero of the ancient myth e.g. Perseus, Hercules, etc. The writer is interested in how the authors of those
famous stories consciously or unconsciously wrote the similar patterns of their heroes. This study will be related to
any hero’s fantasy fiction of literatures.
1.4 Research Questions
Research question is used because this research used qualitative research as the type of research. There are two main questions will be showed in this
research. In relation to the statement of research problem in number three, the research questions are:
1. What are the recurring patterns of human behavior symbolized by
characters in Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief? 2.
How does the Monomyth theory occur to Percy’s journey
1.5 The Goals of The Study
The thesis is written with two main purposes. The first aim of this study is to find out the journey’s pattern of the first main character Percy as the hero in
Riordan Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief .This study is hoped to give the readers a knowledge
of Hero’s Journey and can make a good story with the plot pattern of famous hero’s stories as reflected in the Percy Jackson: The Lightning
thief novel. The second is to find out the archetypes characteristics behind the
hero’s journey through Rick Riordan Percy Jackson: The Lightning thief novel.
4
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
