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Gilgamesh's Journey, His Path To Understanding MortalityGilgameshs Journey, His Path To Understanding Mortality Jessica Martinez Due: a while ago Period 4 Essay # 1 topic: Gilgamesh Gilgamesh? s Journey Through the journey that Gilgamesh experienced he learned many things about himself as well as others. He grew in touch with his inner self. He learned about the hard life and coming in touch with death. He came to terms with his own mortality and learned he should live his life to the fullest to have a fulfilled life.
Through his journey Gilgamesh passes through many challenging obstacles to teach him the lessons of life. Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, starts out on his journey being selfish and arrogant believing he is the only important being in the world. The gods are angry with how Gilgamesh is behaving and they create a creature or an animal they call Enkidu. Enkidu was made to challenge and humiliate Gilgamesh, ? His dreams had revealed the truth, for Gilgamesh knew that he had indeed met his match in Enkidu, ? (Page 180). Enkidu and Gilgamesh end up fighting, but then after the fight they turn out to be good friends.
They end up being such good friends that Gilgamesh decides to bring Enkidu along with him on the rest of his journey. Now that they are friends they start their journey at the Cedar Forest to meet the evil giant Humbaba. They go on to meet the evil giant Humbaba to try to erase all of the evil from the land. As they reach the forest, having fear, Enkidu says, ? When I opened this gate my hands become weak, ? (Page 184) and Gilgamesh replies, ? Do not be afraid, ? (Page 184 also) he then tells Enkidu to touch his robe so that he will not be afraid and will then gain strength in his hands and arms.
They are now in the forest and they kill the giant Humbaba. Gilgamesh and Enkidu have now returned to Uruk, the goddess of love and fertility, named Ishtar pursues Gilgamesh and asks him to marry her. Gilgamesh refuses her proposal and begins making fun of her. Ishtar then becomes angry and goes to her father Anu and asks him to give her the bull of heaven so she could use it to get back at Gilgamesh and destroy Uruk. Ishtar then releases the bull in Uruk and it kills people, Gilgamesh and Enkidu then kill the bull of heaven and the town is happy again. Enkidu has a dream that night that he will die, he tells Gilgamesh his dream, ?
Because Gilgamesh and Enkidu have killed Humbaba and the bull of heaven, the one who removed the Cedars from the mountain must die, Gilgamesh will not die, but Enkidu will. ? (Page 189) Later Gilgamesh finds out that Ishtar has cursed Enkidu with a serious illness and then later Enkidu dies. After Gilgamesh? s loss of his friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh had been grieving for a very long time. Gilgamesh then travels and goes to visit Utanapishtim and tries to learn how human beings can gain immortality since Utanapishtim was once a mortal himself and is now immortal. Gilgamesh takes a journey down a tunnel and gets advice from the fishwife Siduri. The fishwife tells Gilgamesh to?
Accept his fate, ? (Page 194) and is telling him to live his life to the fullest. Gilgamesh is then finally taken to Utanapishtim. Now that Gilgamesh has been taken to Utanapishtim, Utanapishtim tells his story of how the Great Flood impacted his life. Then Utanapishtim challenges Gilgamesh to go without sleep for a week, but after that long and hard journey Gilgamesh was so tired and worn out that he fell fast asleep and failed the challenge to gain immortality. He goes to Utanapishtim once more and Utanapishtim gives Gilgamesh a plant that he is supposed to take back home with him to Uruk, but when Gilgamesh is on his journey he loses the plant. Since Gilgamesh had failed both the challenges he lost the ability to become immortal.
Gilgamesh then remembered what the fishwife Siduri had told him and to live life to the fullest, so Gilgamesh built walls around the city of Uruk that told of his journeys and people admired them and acknowledged them and that made Gilgamesh feel good about the life that he had led. Through Gilgamesh? s journey he learned many things. He gained knowledge of life as well as death. He learned the many lessons that life has to offer and experienced many things made him a stronger person. Through his journey he learned something that we use today which is a lesson that many of us refer to as living life to the fullest.
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