If you’re looking to debate who is
a better partner in crime—in both quests and romance—for Percy Jackson, this is
not the post for you. If you hold
any doubt on that front, I would honestly be surprised. I have never doubted from page one who
Percy was fated to be with.
When
Rachel Elizabeth Dare was introduced in The
Titan’s Curse, I won’t deny that I was intrigued. As the books proceed, these two characters, arguably the two
most important (teenage) females in Percy’s life, are compared and contrasted
increasingly more often. When I
originally read the series a few years ago, I hadn’t paid much attention to
this. The second time around I
couldn’t help but be intrigued by the questions Riordan was raising: not just who’s better for Percy, but
who is the better girl?
When
I first heard Rachel’s name mentioned on my second read through, all I could
remember from years previous was that I liked her, and that I was excited for
her to come into play. The instant
we met a girl with crazy red hair, I was ecstatic. And then I kept reading.
As time went on, I feared Rachel
was doomed to follow in the footsteps of so many redheads gone by. Much like Amy Pond, Rachel has a
tendency to fall in to the cliché of the Fronting Feisty Female (FFF for short).
The FFF is a character who talks a
good act—very brave, very forceful, indefinitely right—but when forced to walk
this talk, they struggle. They are
often in peril and very rarely manage to get themselves out of these
situations. The FFF instead relies
on their typically male protagonist to save them. There were several instances in which I
thought Rachel may be going down this path. For instance, in The
Last Olympian, Rachel’s in a crashing helicopter and Annabeth, being the
amazingly generous demigod that she is, goes to her rescue. But, upon reflection after finishing The Last Olympian, I realized I was
being a bit biased towards Rachel.
For goodness sakes, she was in a crashing helicopter! I kept yelling at the book for her to
get up and do something about it.
But, thinking a little more logically, I tried to take a step back and
realize how terrifying that situation must’ve been.
It
was then that I had a realization about Annabeth. She’s such an excellent warrior and fighter that, in the
narrative of the series, you can’t help but think all women should be that
marvelous. And most of them are—Clarisse,
Katie, even Silena are all very strong, all worthy of their own posts. Rachel, as excellent as she is for a
mortal, she is, in fact, just that—a
mortal. She’s very
straightforward, very helpful and resourceful, brave and demanding. All of these are good things, especially
when it means she can successfully throw a hairbrush at Kronos and manage to
incapacitate him in some form.
Unfortunately
for Rachel, Annabeth is just a little bit better, at just about
everything. I recently read an
article about the Exceptional Woman, which was fascinating. But, at the same time, it shattered the
illusion surrounding a lot of my favorite female characters. Annabeth is one such example. While there are several other girls at
Camp Half-Blood, for a majority of the early books you get the sense that it is
Annabeth alone, playing at the boys game of being a hero. She waits and waits for her first
quest, something she doesn’t truly receive until The Battle of the Labyrinth, might I add. In the meantime, she works to keep Percy and Grover alive,
all the while doing things far better than either of those two can put
together. While I don’t think Annabeth is solely an Exceptional Woman, she
certainly has some aspects of the trope.
Annabeth’s
saving grace from fully receiving the Exceptional Woman title is that she
mourns, she cries, she isn’t perfect 100% of the time. She lingers far too long on the Luke
issue, which makes her far more human than the Exceptional Woman is allowed to
be. She feels genuine betrayal and
guilt over what has happened to Luke.
While this is the biggest struggle the character goes through, it’s what
I like best about her. Not all
girls fall for a demigod who turns evil and is, therefore, forbidden territory;
girls do, however, fall for boys who turn out to be meaner than they were
originally thought to be. It’s
very realistic and it’s written to be very believable. It humanizes her.
Contrastingly,
while Rachel appears to feel pain over her father and her confusion towards her
feelings for Percy, she suffers in a far less believable way. We see her suffer about her father, but
this story doesn’t have the closure the Annabeth/Luke saga does. This takes weight off of her suffering
and makes it seem shallow in some way.
She proves that she is willing to go to the end of the world for Percy
and his cause, but she takes little effort to get to know the others at camp,
(at least in the first series, that is) making her motivations appear to be
nothing but feelings for a boy, or ambitions to be anything but mortal part
of the “in crowd” that is the demigods.
Unfortunately, the thing I love
most about Rachel is what makes her less relatable as a character—she’s
beautifully straightforward, going so far as to essentially ask Percy what a
girl has to do to get him to kiss her.
While I love this about her and I wish more women were like this, I fear
they aren’t, even after exiting the dreadful teenage years. It takes a lot of courage to lay things
out on the line like that, and it’s an attribute not many people actually have.
Annabeth,
while not as straightforward as Rachel, has a different and distinct sort of
directness about her. Instead of asking
Percy what it takes to get him to kiss her, she just decides to kiss him
herself. That clearly takes even
more courage than Rachel’s question and answer process. However, the factor of a life and death
situation in Mt. St. Helen’s should be considered as well. The cause of Annabeth’s directness is
what is possibly even more crucial than the honesty itself. Annabeth is, of course, very wise. She knows the weight of words; once
something is said, it can never be taken back. Part of the reason I think she waits so long to give an
answer to Percy’s questions about Luke is that she is still processing. That being said, once Annabeth is done
processing and has come to an answer, you can rely on that answer to be the
sole truth, without any hesitation.
I don’t know if it makes her more relatable, but it certainly makes her
more reliable.
From Bella to Katniss:
Are Annabeth and Rachel good role models? Let’s start with Annabeth. Annabeth is perhaps the best young adult role model to come
along since Hermione Granger.
She’s intelligent. She may
or may not be pretty—she doesn’t really care, but she knows that she’s got her
brains and that she can use those to do whatever she wants, whether it be
defeating monsters or building the new Olympus. She struggles with love, but she doesn’t let it run her
life. How could she? She’s got monsters to beat and a world
to save. The only hindrance I can
see with Annabeth is, despite the fact that she claims to never be anybody’s
sidekick, she really is almost always second in command to Percy. It isn’t until the Heroes of Olympus series that this becomes less true. When Percy is gone, all the campers
immediately turn to Annabeth as their authority. That says a lot about her character.
Role Model Rating: 8/10
Rachel certainly has some redeeming role model
characteristics. She’s brave and
loyal. She’s artistic and fights
for the causes she believes in with all her heart. Honesty is high on her list of priorities; if she has a
thought in her head, it’s coming out of mouth—not necessarily in a rude manner,
she’s actually really rather nice.
This is possibly her best quality, the quality that almost makes her a
better role model than Annabeth.
But I just can’t quite bring myself to rate her higher, as there’s some
ambiguous quality to Miss Dare that leaves her just automatically ranking below
Annabeth in my book.
Role Model Rating:
6/10
From Lorelai to Wonder Woman: Are Annabeth and Rachel relatable? Once again, we’ll start with Annabeth. Annabeth’s immense struggle with what
has happened to Luke makes her a very relatable character. Notice, I did not say her struggle with
what has happened to Luke and what that means in terms of her potential
feelings for Percy. For me, the
truth she reveals to Luke at the end of The
Last Olympian implies that those things were never truly connected to
her. She didn’t have lingering
feelings for Luke that were preventing her from liking Percy; she had lingering
guilt over what she could’ve done to help Luke that prevented her from pursuing
anything romantic until she could sort him out. This takes Percy out of the equation entirely, which
actually makes her struggle with Luke far more authentic. It’s driven by her own guilt, not her
feelings for some outside party that didn’t really know the Luke she knew. Add the fact that she feels personally
responsible, and you’ve got a heap load of relatable factors. On the other hand, she’s so brilliant
at, well, everything that she can sometimes be difficult to connect with.
Relatability Rating:
7/10
Unfortunately for Rachel, the quality that makes her almost
the better role model of the two hits her harder when it comes to being
relatable. While I adore her
straightforward attitude, it is something seen very infrequently in the real
world. She does, however, stand by
her convictions and her causes.
There is also the added factor that she is the only Mortal to do several
things—enter Camp Half-Blood, ascend to a position of power in their world and
fight in the battle, amongst other things. This has the audience rooting for her, as she gives us mere
mortals an opportunity to join the world as well.
Relatability Rating:
6/10
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