The Titan's Curse

“Not that I resented Thalia. She was cool. It wasn’t her fault her dad was Zeus and she got all the attention….Still, I didn’t need to run after her to solve every problem. Besides, there wasn’t time. The di Angelos were in danger. They might be long gone by the time I found my friends. I knew monsters. I could handle this myself.”

Over the course of The Titan’s Curse, Percy must reckon with his impulsiveness, often jumping into battle because he believes that he can fix a situation rather than working with a team to do so. In this instance, Thalia blames him for leaping after the di Angelos alone without regrouping, arguing that his decision to go after them without waiting for her and Annabeth led to the latter’s capture.

“‘The stirring of monsters.’ Dr. Thorn smiled evilly. ‘The worst of them, the most powerful, are now waking. Monsters that have not been seen in thousands of years. They will cause death and destruction the likes of which mortals have never known. And soon we shall have the most important monster of all—the one that shall bring about the downfall of Olympus!’”

Dr. Thorn, the manticore, references a frequent motif in the novel: the idea that ancient creatures are “stirring.” In the world of Percy Jackson & the Olympians, monsters can never be destroyed. Rather, they either get trapped or reconstituted after a certain amount of time. Dr. Thorn makes note that ancient ones are beginning to wake up, and this is symbolic of a darker shift in the book, one in which Kronos is getting more powerful as part of the wider arc of the series in which The Titan’s Curse is the third book.

“As anxious as I felt about Annabeth—all I wanted to do was search for her—I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the di Angelos. I remembered what it was like for me when I first learned I was a demigod.”

The di Angelos have a particularly hard journey, not even having a mortal parent to help them explain their identity. They, like most if not all of the half-bloods, learn that one parent has been noticeably absent and may not always seem to care, despite being shuffled around from place to place.