Literature

The main character in The Epic of Gilgamesh is frequently blinded by his superior physical and intellectual gifts.   Gilgamesh is a powerful king, he is widely admired for his many special talents, and though he is cruel his position of authority is never questioned.  There is, however, one goal that eludes Gilgamesh despite his deepest desires and his quest to find the knowledge necessary to defeat death and to thereby become immortal.  Gilgamesh, in effect, views himself as a sort of transcendental figure entitled to escape the inevitability of death.  It is only after a number of failed attempts to secure the secret to immortality that Gilgamesh ultimately realizes that death cannot be escaped and that the limits of immortality relate to what humans contribute and leave for future generations.  His ultimate recognition of mortality therefore underpins his decision to transform from a cruel authoritarian king into a more benevolent leadership figure.  In support of this thesis, that Gilgameshs character was essentially a device to show the inevitability of death and that life should be used for good deeds, this essay will discuss his initial arrogance and how this arrogance is ultimately tempered and channeled into more selfless types of human behavior.  It is in this way, how human beings come to grudgingly accept the inevitability of death, that Gilgamesh is truly representative of all men.

As an initial matter, Gilgamesh pursues a lifestyle that stresses the satisfaction of his personal needs rather than the needs or the desires of other people.  He rapes women when he is sexually attracted, he forces his subjects to build monuments to satisfy his enormous ego, and  he seems to view the kingdom as existing to refelect his own superiority rather than existing to benefit all of its inhabitants.  The turning point is when Gilgameshs arrogance is at its peak, when he and Enkido are returning from the forest of cedar trees, and he pompously rejects the romantic advances made by Ishtar.  She is a goddess, she represents love, and Gilgamesh views himself as being too important for the love of a single woman even if she is a goddess.  The text provides the severity of this rebuke, Gilgamesh attracts the eye of Ishtar, goddess of love. She proposes marriage, sweetening the proposal with offers of power and wealth. He rejects her, contemptuously listing the miseries she has caused her previous lovers.  This is a pivotal moment in the text because it is the height of Gilgameshs arrogance and it is the event which ultimately persuades the Gods to kill Enkido in a manner that forces Gilgamesh to grapple with his own potential mortality.  There are events in the lives of all men which suddenly reinforce the inevitability of death these events are various and might include the death of a parent or the onset of an unanticipated illness.  For Gilgamesh, Enkidos death forces him to question whether he might be able to escape death.

Gilgamesh consequently engages in a quest to find the secret knowledge whereby immortality can be achieved.  In this respect, Gilgamesh is again representative of all men.  Stem cell research and cryogenics are scientific areas of knowledge in which human beings seek to delay or to evade death.  The knowledge which Gilgamesh seeks, though hardly as advanced as todays scientific theories, is nevertheless the same in terms of seeking to acquire a type of knowledge through which his death can be delayed or evaded.  Indeed, confronted by the scorpion guards, Gilgamesh explicitly states the purpose of his quest, I have come on account of my ancestor Utanapishtim, who joined the Assembly of the Gods, and was given eternal life. About Death and Life I must ask him.  He ultimately fails to secure this knowledge, as all men throughout history have consistently failed, and it is only when he realizes that he cannot escape death that he begins to transform from a cruel figure into a more benevolent figure.  This is because his that human mortality applies to him forces Gilgamesh to seek his immortality by being a good king in a way that will create an everlasting legacy even though he will physically die.

In the final analysis, Gilgamesh is representative of all men in several respects.  He lives a youthful life in which arrogance predominates and death seems an impossibility later however, with the death of his closest friend, it suddenly becomes clear that death is an extraordinarily pervasive phenomenon.  Rather than admitting his own mortality with the death of Enkido, Gilgamesh instead attempts to secure the secret knowledge necessary to delay or eliminate this future death.  Maturity and wisdom come when he finally accepts that this type of knowledge is inaccessible and that immortality is achieved through good deeds rather than everlasting life.