Gilgamesh as a Hero
"When the gods created Gilgamesh they gave him a perfect body. Shamash the glorious sun endowed him with beauty, Adad the god of the storm endowed him with courage, the great gods made his beauty perfect, surpassing all others, terrifying like a great wild bull. Two thirds they made him god and one third man.(pg.13)" The historic poem of Gilgamesh is labeled the "first great heroic narrative of world literature.(pg.10)" It details the story of a super-human King who embarks on a journey and after many trials and tribulations returns home and engraves his story in stone before dying. By some definitions Gilgamesh is considered a hero however; I find that Gilgamesh's decisions, arrogance and selfishness prevent him from being a true hero.Joseph Campbell describes a hero as a powerful human being embarks on a quest to win a war, gain a mystical object or to gain an understanding, then returns home with some type of wisdom and self-knowledge. Based on this definition, the title character in Gilgamesh could be labeled a hero. However, I disagree with Campbell's definition in one aspect that I believe to be the key to heroism. A hero should carry the attributes of courage, wisdom and strength as Gilgame
Gilgamesh's story is an incredible and fascinating story, but it is about a man and the ways in which his decisions impact the path his life took, the story does not chronicle a hero. Gilgamesh the king is about to celebrate marriage with the Queen of Love, and he still demands to be first with the bride, the king to be first and the husband to follow. He wishes to kill Humbaba to essentially make himself look good and preserve his name in history. sh did, however, a true hero should also carry compassion, and selflessness. Throughout the epic adventure of Gilgamesh, the title character makes several decisions which cause him to fall below heroic standards. Due to his poor decision making which brought others harm, his arrogance which caused him to put other people's needs as secondary to his own, and his selfishness which lead him on journey's only to benefit himself, Gilgamesh is not a hero. for that was ordained by the gods from his birth, from the time the umbilical cord was cut. A hero should be someone who tries to sympathize with ordinary people, or at least does not flaunt their arrogance. From the beginning of the epic, we learn from the men of Uruk, Gilgamesh's Kingdom, that Gilgamesh's ".
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Acceptance Essays
