The Lightning Thief

by

Rick Riordan

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Lightning Thief makes teaching easy.
Luke is an older teen at Camp Half-Blood. His father, Hermes, claimed Luke, so Luke is now the leader of the Hermes cabin. Though Luke seems genuinely interested in taking care of the many younger kids who wind up in his cabin, he’s also generally disillusioned with camp and life as a young demigod. He feels abandoned by Hermes and never mentions his mother, but he seems to have few connections to blood family members and struggles because of this. Luke ended up at Camp Half-Blood with Thalia and young Annabeth, and Annabeth has had a crush on Luke ever since. He’s also quite handsome and skilled with a sword. His skills earned him a quest several years ago. Though this means that many campers revere and admire Luke, Luke thinks little of his quest—he repeated Hercules’s quest to steal a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides, and the experience got him nothing but a pat on the back as far as he’s concerned. Though Luke becomes a caring mentor to Percy during Percy’s time at camp and even gives Percy a seemingly useful parting gift of winged tennis shoes, Percy later discovers that Luke is a double agent. Luke’s loneliness, angst, and disillusionment with gods and with his father made Luke a prime target for the imprisoned Titan Kronos, who seeks to rise to power again and overthrow the gods. In Luke’s opinion, the gods have done nothing but condemn him to a life of loneliness, danger, and sorrow as a pawn, so he feels he has every reason to overthrow them. Percy discovers this when Luke makes an attempt to kill him with a poisonous pit scorpion on the last day before summer campers leave. Luke’s betrayal hits everyone hard, but Percy and Annabeth vow to track down Luke when they return to camp next summer.

Luke Quotes in The Lightning Thief

The The Lightning Thief quotes below are all either spoken by Luke or refer to Luke. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Identity, Heroism, and Normalcy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 22 Quotes

“That’s not an easy quest,” I said. “Hercules did it.”

“Exactly,” Luke said. “Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done? [...] and when I came back, all I got was pity. I wanted to pull Olympus down stone by stone right then, but I bided my time. I began to dream of Kronos.”

Related Characters: Percy Jackson (speaker), Luke (speaker), Hermes, Kronos
Page Number: 366
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Lightning Thief LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Lightning Thief PDF

Luke Quotes in The Lightning Thief

The The Lightning Thief quotes below are all either spoken by Luke or refer to Luke. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Identity, Heroism, and Normalcy Theme Icon
).
Chapter 22 Quotes

“That’s not an easy quest,” I said. “Hercules did it.”

“Exactly,” Luke said. “Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done? [...] and when I came back, all I got was pity. I wanted to pull Olympus down stone by stone right then, but I bided my time. I began to dream of Kronos.”

Related Characters: Percy Jackson (speaker), Luke (speaker), Hermes, Kronos
Page Number: 366
Explanation and Analysis: