Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh is a story in which you find many adventures and events that will call ones attention. Throughout the long journey, Gilgamesh, the main character and king of Uruk, experiences many new feelings and lives through important lessons that he will have in mind during the future. Gilgamesh will find friendship, live through the strong feelings of love and hatred; he will have to be courageous to achieve his goals and will learn much about loyalty. He will question his own abilities but always consider himself the best of all creatures’ except gods, with which he fights, gets supported, rejected or he receives their help and affection.
During this journey throughout a small section of Gilgamesh’s life, he will be able to understand himself better and discover his limits and weaknesses. This book doesn’t just narrate a story, it gives us all a lesson and an example of experiences to follow or reject since we can now figure out what the result is; positive or negative.

Afterlife

The underworld is a place feared and dreamed by many. "Now tell me, how is it in the Nether world?" (pg.90)This is something that bothered Ishmael and it probably bothers every other human, mortal mind. Predictions are made and stories of how everything will keep going. What the fate of each person varies with the life they lived and many stories and theories arise from many different questions. What will happen after we die? How will life be? Will we all be treated in the same way? Will good and bad be divided? Will some have more privileges than others or will we all be equal? What happens after afterlife? Is there anything that concerns the ones that already are in the afterlife? How do people o souls or spirits or whatever that is left of us looks like? Do we even go to an afterlife? I guess many of this questions will never be answered but many stories will arise trying to explain them and they will always be there bothering our minds.

Noahs Arc or Utnapishtims Boat?

"Take with you, on the boat you build, an instance of each thing living so that they may be sae from obliteration in the flood. " (pg66)
This section of the book reminds me to the christian story of noahs arc. It is based on the story of a man who makes a boat really big in which he saves a pair of each kind of living things and helps them survive a terrible flood. After the inundation the only survivors are the creatures that got protection in the boat. When the rain finally stops, in both stories, the main character lets out birds until they finally come back with a sign of land so they are able to start again from the begining.
This helps us realize how many of the stories of the church can be based on tales of stories we consider unreal while we have our complete trust on the fact that the bible tells us only truth. We might be able to find many other similar stories to the epics told in the bible.

Fear to death

Humans have always feared death, but gods, who are immortal don’t have to worry about it. Gilgamesh being two parts god and one part human did have to worry about his death and after experiencing Enkidus death, Gilgamesh finally realized what a terrible fait he was facing. Scared of his death Gilgamesh set out in another adventure but now he was finding a way to avoid death. To all the people he met he told why he was there, about Enkidus terrible fait and most of all his fear for death, “I roam the wilderness because I fear, Enkidu, the companion, whom I loved, is dirt, the companion Enkidu is clay. Must I die to? Must Gilgamesh be like that?” (pg. 60) still at the end the old man tells him what is most important of all, “the day of death is set, though not made known.” (pg. 64) All humans must die and just like Gilgamesh, many fear death and try to find ways to get away from it, but at the end we all accept the fact that the old man said.

Motives

Between people there are some devotionals that are created and will never be forgotten not even on the day of death. In Gilgamesh, Enkidu and Gilgamesh had one that was kind of their motive. They would say it to inspire one another through battle and it would remind them of what a good team they were. They had a really good relationship in which they loved each other and they really admired one another. This is why, one of the last words spoken to Gilgamesh while Enkidu was dying were “two people, companions, they can prevail” (pg.43). After that you would think that Enkidu was no longer feeling guilty to die and that’s why he just allowed himself to die after so much suffering.

Will dreams come true?

Each night we have a dream, sometimes we remember them the next morning, sometimes we don’t. There are many different beliefs of what is transmitted through dreams and each person might have a different interpretation of these. The dream readers are told to be able to predict the future but how accurate is their information? Through dreams many people can tell what will happen next and will make different choices depending on what their dream “told” them.

During the journey that Gilgamesh and Enkidu cover, Gilgamesh tells the dreams he has and Enkidu interprets them all as positive and prosperous. Enkidu says it’s the fall of their enemy and the glory of Gilgamesh, and through their journey, Enkidu’s predictions turn out to come true, but was it mere coincidence of his hopes of triumph in his expedition, or was it that he could really read and interpret dreams.

Good and Evil

In books you can usually find a good guy and a bad guy, but in life how do you know who the good and who the bad guy is? It also occurs that the good guy usually wins, but facing the complications stated before, how do you know who deserves to win, and how can you confirm that the "good guy" will win? If we were to assume that each person in this world is living a book, then each person will be the main character, have conflicts and should have a resolution; but it doesn't always occur that way so how do we find out who is worthy of being called good or bad? We all still have a different perspective of life, and with this we obtain an individual perspective of everything that surrounds us, including people and actions, this is why no one will ever be able to know if he is good or bad.
In Gilgamesh we have already been introduced to several characters, but as in life, all we can do is predict what they will do, but we don't know yet if they will turn out "good" or "bad".

Temptation

In the book Gilgamesh we can find how characters struggle with one of humans´s most common flaws, temptation. In the book Enkidu is seduced by a harlot and falls under her charm, because of this he is separated from what he is used to, the animals and the wilderness. He is also tempted to go to Uruk and challenge Gilgamesh to prove himself stronger after Shamhat talks of Gilgamesh of the strongets and most powerful of all.
But Enkidu is not the only one that has been tempted, Gilgamesh has put himself in a dangerous position just to show he is the greatest and strongest of all. He will to the Cedar Forest, wherre no one is known to come back, an achieve greatest glory.

What for?

This blog was created for my english class in which we will be discussing the books that we will read throughout our semester. My expectations for this blog is to be able to comment and share my views of the book and receive opinions of other people that will help me have different interpretations of each book. By having an online discussion i will be able to share doubts and questions and I will have many suggestions and comments on my works and entries.