Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
This passage repays close reading because it does in three sentences what most novels need a chapter to do: it shows a character recognizing his own prejudice in real time and locating the SOURCE of that prejudice (inherited stories rather than direct experience). Watch the structure. The first sentence establishes Percy's expectation, grounded in Greek myth. The second sentence shows the gap between the expectation and the actual person. The third sentence performs the most difficult intellectual move available to a young reader: it considers two possible explanations for the gap (the stories were wrong, OR the stories were right about some and wrong about others) and quietly chooses the harder explanation. The harder explanation is harder because it does not let Percy off the hook. If the stories were simply wrong, Percy was a victim of bad sources. If the stories were partly right, Percy is responsible for not having asked which case Tyson belonged to. Riordan is doing serious moral education here — he is showing his protagonist learning that prejudice is not the absence of knowledge but the failure to ask whether what you know applies to the particular person in front of you.
I had read enough Greek myths to know exactly what a Cyclops was supposed to be. Polyphemus had eaten Odysseus's men one at a time, and the Cyclopes who forged Zeus's lightning bolts were said to be w...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use to create that effect?
Discussion Questions
- Percy considers two explanations for the gap between Greek myth and Tyson. The first is that the stories were wrong. The second is that the stories were right about SOME Cyclopes and wrong about others. Why is the second explanation harder, and what does Percy's willingness to consider the harder explanation reveal about the kind of person he is becoming?
- Riordan suggests through this chapter that the source of prejudice is not ignorance but the misapplication of partial knowledge. Is this a more useful definition of prejudice than the simpler 'prejudice is when you do not know any better'? What does this definition imply for how prejudice should be addressed — is the cure more knowledge, more attention, or something else?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A judgment formed in advance of direct encounter, often based on inherited stories or partial knowledge applied to particular cases the original knowledge did not concern
Item 2
The use of a true general principle in a specific case where the principle does not actually apply, typically out of mental shortcut rather than genuine ignorance
Item 3
The condition of being a specific individual case, with features that may or may not match any general category one might use to describe the case
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free