Response to “The Epic of Gilgamesh”

“The Epic of Gilgamesh” is a very ancient mythology. It has three parts, and the one we have read is the first part. It is about a man, Gilgamesh who is a three out of two god. He is the king of Uruk. In addition, Gilgamesh is as powerful as the real god, so he includes the most powers at that time. However, he does not care about his people, and he imposes too much stress to them.   Enkidu is a person, who is made by Aruru goddess. He has appropriate power to Gilgamesh. Then they become friends, and they are dominating Uruk together. Unfortunately, Enkidu dies. After he dies, Gilgamesh is afraid of death; he tries very hard to find a plant that has “the property of rejuvenation”. When he finds the plant, it already is taken away by a snake.

In the story, it mentions about the love from Ishtar goddess. She loves Gilgamesh, and pays court to him, but Gilgamesh refuses. Then she becomes angry, she asks his father Anu god to kill Gilgamesh or Enkidu. From the context, we can know that, love can change a person to hate; Ishtar goddess cannot have the love from Gilgamesh, so she wants him to be died even though he loved him very much. It is sarcasm, and it is very common in social live. Also, it reflects the dark side of human being’s.  In fact, the action she makes is not her fault, it is just human nature.

On the other hand, Gilgamesh wants to live for a long time in the story, so he is looking for the plant. Actually, we know that Gilgamesh is a three out of two god, and he is very powerful. However, even for him he is afraid of death. It shows a theory, although Gilgamesh is very powerful, he is still a human being, and he is going to die in someday. Moreover, great hero is not able to avoid the death, so people need to enjoy the live they have now, and accept the destiny.

In my opinion, I think it is a good opportunity to understand different type of stories. In the story, it uses lots of repetition and some difficult old fashion vocabulary. Those make this story become hard to understand the meaning.