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flightfoot · 6 years

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Apollo’s Defense Mechanisms

Apollo uses quite a few defense mechanisms in TOA, and is implied to have been using them for millennia. Indeed, TOA seems to be systematically breaking these defense mechanisms, forcing him to reevalauate himself. Most of these I’ve alluded to in the past, especially in Apollo has always been the sort of person who fights for his friends - he’s just buried that part of himself for millennia and Apollo’s pretty terrible at reading people’s thoughts and emotions at first, but becomes an expert at it over the course of the books, once he starts dropping his facades, but I haven’t looked at them in-depth, or named them for the most part.

Repression

Basically, this defense mechanism states that a person unconsciously relegates a memory, thought, or emotion to the subconscious, because it would cause distress if recalled consciously. They, themselves are unaware they are doing this.

Since this is unconscious, this particular defense mechanism requires more speculating and assumptions than subsequent ones do. I believe that Apollo has been repressing some of thoughts and conclusions he’s forced to acknowledge in TOA, though it could also be due to some garden-variety denial. They can be hard to tell apart at times.

One of the major things I believe Apollo is repressing, is his knowledge of what a human life is worth. He KNOWS that mortals matter, since he cared about his mortal lovers, like Daphne and Hyacinthus, and his mortal children, like the (previously) mortal Asclepius. He’s seemed to continue to fool himself about how much mortals matter though. Pre-series and threw the beginning of The Hidden Oracle, he considered demigods to be fodder to throw at problems, like in The Hidden Oracle, when he’s told that The Oracle of Delphi isn’t working, and he proposes dispatching “ some of you talented fodder—I mean heroes—” (29).

There’s also that time at lunch, when he’s scouting out top-tier demigods.

I studied the campers, hoping to spot some potential servants…I mean new friends. Gods always like to keep a few strong veteran demigods handy to throw into battle, send on dangerous quests, or pick the lint off our togas. (64)

He’s unconcerned with demigods’ safety here, and doesn’t seem to consider their desires at all. You can see this is in action in Percy Jackson and The Singer of Apollo, when Apollo sends Percy and Grover on a quest, without seeming to care what they think of it at all.

“we’re kind of off duty, Lord Apollo. It’s Grover’s birthday.”

“Happy birthday!” Apollo said. “I’m so glad you’re taking the day off. That means you two have time to help me with a small problem!”

Later in their conversation with Apollo, Apollo’s pretty upfront about what he thinks of heroes.

“Besides, this is what heroes are for.”

“Running the gods’ errands,” I muttered.

“Exactly.”

He also apparently wouldn’t care about demigods slaughtering each other in battle in the past, and would use it as entertainment.

When I was a god, I would have delighted to leave the mortal heroes to fend for themselves. I would have made popcorn and watched the bloodbath on Mount Olympus, or simply caught the highlight reel later. (TDP 283)

And yet, it doesn’t take much to break him out of this mindset. As soon as Meg goes missing, Apollo is distraught:

I retrieved Meg’s swords from the mud. Instantly, they changed into gold rings - so small, so easily lost, like a mortal life. I may have cried. I tried to break my ridiculous combat ukulele, but the celestial bronze instrument defied my attempts. Finally, I yanked off the A string, threaded it through Meg’s rings, and tied them around my neck.

“Meg, I will find you,” I muttered. (231)

He’s really thinking about mortal lives here, not just Meg’s specifically. Only a few hours later, when Nero’s attempting to burn down the forest and everyone in it, a bunch of dryads emerge from the trees and give their lives to stop the fire. Apollo makes a realization here, one that he makes so easily and fully, I think it’s been in the back of his head for most of his life, but he’s refused to acknowledge:

Then it occurred to me how many times I had asked for sacrifices, how many heroes I had sent to their deaths. Had they been any less noble and courageous than these dryads? Yet I had felt no remorse when I sent them off on deadly tasks. I had used them and discarded them, laid waste to their lives to build my own glory. I was no less of a monster than Nero. (168)

This thought was finally allowed into Apollo’s consciousness. He just couldn’t keep up the repression, not now, not after everything’s that’s happened. He embraces the knowledge, as discomforting as it is.

Denial

Apollo makes several realizations in The Hidden Oracle that he denies immediately afterwards. For instance, he’s in denial about Percy’s feelings about him. He can see how Percy feels, but he refuses to believe it.

If I didn’t know how much Percy Jackson adored me, I would have sworn he was about to punch me in my already broken nose. (26)

Apollo’s also quite upset about the thought that he might be treated as a mortal, with everything that comes with it:

Percy frowned. “Apollo, if you’re really mortal, like, one hundred percent mortal, can you even get in to Camp Half-Blood?”

The seven-layer dip began to churn in my stomach. “Please don’t say that. Of course I’ll get in. I have to.”

“But you could get hurt in battle now…” Percy mused. “Then again, maybe monsters would ignore you because you’re not important?”

“Stop!” My hands trembled. Being a mortal was traumatic enough. The thought of being barred from camp, of being unimportant…No. That simply could not be.

“I’m sure I’ve retained some powers,” I said. “I’m still gorgeous, for instance, if I could just get rid of this acne and lose some flab. I must have other abilities!” (40-41)

He continues some of this denial into The Dark Prophecy, though not to the same extent. He’s extremely irritated at Britomartis for sending him and Calypso to get her griffins, and giving only moderate praise in return:

“Apollo, I must admit you did moderately well retrieving my griffins.”

“Moderately well?” I bit back a few nasty comments. I wondered if demigods ever felt the need to restrain themselves when facing ungrateful gods like these. No. Surely not. I was special and different. And I deserved better treatment. (167)

He makes the realization that “this is how demigods feel”, but the thought is uncomfortable for him, so he denies it. Not very convincingly, though. And even in The Hidden Oracle, he realized how in denial he was, particularly when he saw it mirrored in Meg:

Her denial was so complete, so irrational, I realized there was no way I could argue with her. She reminded me painfully of myself when I fell to earth—how I had refused to accept my new reality. Without Meg’s help, I would’ve gotten myself killed. Now our roles were reversed. (304)

Denial may be one of his most common defense mechanisms, but even it fails eventually. By the end of The Dark Prophecy, he’s pretty much abandoned it.

Cognitive Distortion

I’ve talked about Apollo’s cognitive distortions before, like the other defense mechanisms I’ve listed, but I didn’t use the correct terminology before. Cognitive distortions are a general term for a thought pattern that causes the person to view the world in a distorted, inaccurate manner.

Apollo’s major cognitive distortions tend to center around remembering himself to be more important and more well-loved than he really is, sometimes minimizing other’s roles in the process. He seems to be consciously trying to reinforce this thought pattern, considering his “standard motivational speech”:

I took a deep breath. Then I did my usual motivational speech in the mirror: “You are gorgeous and people love you!”

I went out to face the world. (31)

He uses this technique multiple times. He uses it again later on in The Hidden Oracle, as a way to stave off his anxiety:

If I hadn’t let Python take over Delphi, if I’d paid more attention to the other ancient Oracles, if I hadn’t lost my divinity—

Stop it, Apollo, I scolded myself. You’re beautiful and everyone loves you.

But it was becoming increasingly difficult to believe that. My father, Zeus, did not love me. The demigods at Camp Half-Blood did not love me. Python and the Beast and his comrades at Triumvirate Holdings did not love me. It was almost enough to make me question my self-worth. (208)

He’s tied his self-worth to others’ perception of him, and then manipulated how he thinks others see him, in an effort to boost his sense of self worth. He attempts to use this in the Burning Maze as well, give him enough of a sense of self to stave off Medea’s attack. It doesn’t work.

“Every bit of my willpower bent instinctively to keeping myself in one piece. I was Apollo, wasn’t I? I… I was beautiful and people loved me. The world needed me!” (p. 372).

Him feeling like he NEEDS people to love and need him in order to justify his existence, to tell himself that he has worth, helps explain why he feels the need to be adored so much. It’s why he fools himself into thinking he has Percy’s adoration and respect.

He also minimizes others contributions in favor of emphasizing his own, so that he comes off as better by comparison.

I couldn’t quite remember what Percy Jackson was talking about. During the war with Gaea, I had been focused mostly on my own fabulous exploits. But I suppose he and his friends had undergone a few minor hardships. (32)

Apollo didn’t really do much of anything during the War, except hide out on Delos and show up at the Parthenon. But he wants to tell himself that he did, because it makes him feel more important, more needed.

He apparently exaggerates quite a bit, actually. When he’s reading about himself in some of Will’s books, he notes that:

Normally this would have been a happy task. I am, after all, a fascinating subject. This time, however, I gained no satisfaction from my glorious exploits. They all seemed like exaggerations, lies, and…well, myths. (183)

We don’t get details about how these accounts are distorted, exactly, but we do know that Apollo has a history of doing so. Especially with Python. Python nearly killed him, but he told storytellers that killing him was super quick and easy... because that’s what he WANTED it to be. It’s not JUST about making himself sound better. Talking about how he struggled valiantly against his mighty foe would arguably have come across as a more impressive feat. But that’s not what he WANTED to have happened. He WANTS to have been able to have easily defeated Python. He doesn’t want to remember how close he came to being destroyed. Apollo’s distortions are his way of rearranging reality to be more to his liking, even if it means lying to himself.

Psychological Projection

Projection is basically taking your own unwanted thoughts and feelings and assigning them to another person. Apollo indulges in this one occasionally, though it’s rarer than the other defense mechanisms I’ve listed.

When talking to Percy, he projects his own egotism onto him:

I wanted to get back to talking about my problems. I was impatient with Percy for turning the conversation to himself. Sadly, I have found this sort of self-centeredness common among demigods. (34)

It always disappointed me when mortals put themselves first and failed to see the big picture—the importance of putting me first—but I had to remind myself that this young man had helped me out on many previous occasions. (35)

Projecting his feelings onto Percy helps him to avoid acknowledging his own feelings, his own egotism. It makes him feel like he is in the right, by pretending that the negative qualities in himself belong to another person.

He projects again later on in the book, when he meets up with Rhea, and is talking about the emperors:

“But how could we not know about this?” I demanded. “We are gods!”

Rhea’s laugh reminded me of a piglet with asthma. “Apollo, Grandson, beautiful child…Has being a god ever stopped someone from being stupid?”

She had a point. Not about me personally, of course, but the stories I could tell you about the other Olympians… (243)

He doesn’t want to admit that he’s in that category of being stupid, but he’ll happily give the label to other gods, so he doesn’t have to deal with it himself.

Displacement

Basically, displacement is taking your feelings out on someone else, because taking them out on the cause of the feelings would be too dangerous. There’s only one notable example I can think of where Apollo uses this, but it’s an important one: when Apollo displaces his anger at his father for electrocuting him and for murdering Asclepius, onto the Master Bolt, and then onto those who made the Master Bolt, the Elder Cyclopes. Apollo himself addresses this one in The Burning Maze, since Meg is doing something similar with Nero and Caligula:

“My father, Zeus, killed one of my favorite sons, Asclepius, for bringing people back from the dead without permission. Long story. The point is... I was furious with Zeus, but he was too powerful and scary for me to fight. He would’ve vaporized me. So I took out my revenge another way.

[...]

“Anyway,” I continued,” I couldn’t kill Zeus. So I found the guys who had made his lightning bolts, the Cyclopes. I killed them in revenge for Asclepius. As punishment, Zeus made me mortal.”

[...]

“I was projecting my anger onto someone else, someone safer.” (237-238)

Something I find interesting here: Apollo is perfectly aware of how and why he did this. But he went through with it anyway. Even knowing that the Cyclopes weren’t truly the ones he was angry at, he still killed them, because he still FELT like they were, and he needed to lash out at SOMEONE, even if it wasn’t their fault.

By the end of The Dark Prophecy, or the Burning Maze at the latest, all these defense mechanisms have broken down. Apollo has to let out some of his emotions in The Dark Prophecy, crying over a toilet as he relives murdering Commodus, and watching Trophonious cut Agamethus’ head off, because he refused to intervene. But Jo helps him through it, gives him acceptance and support, and gradually he calms down. Later, in the Cave of Trophonious, he nearly gives up and lets himself pass on to the other side of the Styx, but doesn’t because if he does, then Meg will too. And the same goes for Meg. She refuses to let herself die, because even though she feels like she deserves it, if she dies, then Apollo will pass on too. Both of them resist dying because the other person needs them. He starts relying on others, confiding in them, taking strength from their support, and being support in turn.

In the Burning Maze, Apollo feels very guilty and miserable whenever others die. He blames himself for not being able to save Money Maker, thinking that he could have saved her if he still had his godly power. When Jason dies, he blames himself for both Jason’s death, and Piper’s pain. He even blames himself for Crest’s death, for not being able to save him, for making yet another promise he couldn’t keep.

But now, he deals with the pain differently. He accepts it, and channels it. In fact, he started doing this as early as The Hidden Oracle, when he took all the pain from his guilt, sorrow, and heartbreak, and channeled it outwards in order to subdue the myrmekes. In the Burning Maze, he channels his grief and pain over Jason’s death, into the strength to go on, and not let his sacrifice be in vain. He does the same with Crest’s death, moving forwards, accepting his feelings in full, but not letting them drag him down, but instead taking strength from them. As painful as they are, he refuses to shy away anymore. This is reflected in the last few lines of The Burning Maze:

I would defeat the emperors. I would free Delphi from Python’s grasp. I would not allow those who had sacrificed themselves to do so for nothing.

Perhaps this quest had ended on a suspended fourth chord. We still had much to do.

But from now on, I would be more than Lester. I would be more than an observer.

I would be Apollo.

I would remember. (418-419)

He will take all that pain, would remember all the pain, and everything he’s learned. And he will turn it into strength, carrying on the will of those who are already departed, so that hopefully more will not die.

#trials of apollo #lester papadopoulos #apollo #the burning maze #the trials of apollo #my analysis post #the dark prophecy #the hidden oracle #toa #I COMPLETELY changed my conclusion on this one #But I think I like this one better #Discussion is always encouraged!#This thing was sitting in my drafts for SO long #apolloappreciation

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