Destiny Of Gildemesh And The Iliad Essay, Research Paper

“Destiny in Gilgamesh and The Iliad”

Stories do not need to inform us of things. From Gilgamesh for example, we

know that some of the people who lived in the land between the Tigris and Euphates

rivers in the second and third milleniums BCE. We know they celabrated a king

named Gilgamesh; we know they believed in many gods; we know they were self-

-consious of their own cultivation of the natural world; and we know they were

literate. In the story, The Iliad we also know that great rulers and gods ruled and

where top priority of the lands. Point being it can be argued that the story of Gil-

-gamesh and the Iliad destiny’s are quite the same in relivence of the wars and the

way’s of life both of the story’s complete to meaningful death. In hand which comtr-

-ibutes to both of the epics.

In the story of Gilgamesh, it is important to look careful what happened

in the story; that is , look at it as if the actions and people it describes actually took

place or existed. The questions raised by a character’s actions discuss the implic-

-ations of their consequences. But it’s not to consider how the story is put together

rather how it uses the conventions of language, of events with beginings and endings

of description of character and storytelling itself to reawaken our sensitivity to the

real world. The real world is the world without conventions, the unnameable, unrep-

resentable world–in it’s continuity of action, it’s shadings and blurrings of character

its indecipherable patterns of being. The Iliad and Gilgamesh story’s is greatly a

remminder of the way life is today; just different in time but neitherless to say

similiar in goals and destiny’s.

Moreover, in the prologue of Gilgamesh it’s found to know that he was two-

-thirds god and one-third man, and his knowledge is the key that follows. Gilgamesh

is a hero– more beautiful, more courageous, more terrifying than the rest of us; his

desires, attributes, and accomplishments epitomize our own. Yet he is also mortal:

he must experiance the death of others and also die himself. How much more must

a god rage against death than we who are merely mortal! And if he can reconile

himself with death then surely we can. In fact, without death his life would be mean-

-ingless, and the adventures that make up the epic would disappear.

The story begins with the coming of Enkidu. As a young man and a god

Gilgamesh has no compasion with the people of Uruk. He is their king but not their

shepherd; he kills their sons and rapes the daughters. Hearing the peolpe’s lament,

the gods create Enkidu as a match for Gilgamesh, a second self:”[L]et them contend

together and leave Uruk in quiet”(31). The plan works in several ways. First Enkidu

prevents Gilgamesh from entering the house of a bride and bridegroom; they fight

embrace as friends. Second, Enkudu and Gilgamesh undertake a journey into the

forest to confront the terrible Humbaba. There they encourage each other to face

death triumphantly:

[All] living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at least in the boat of the

west/ and when it sinks/when the boat of Magilum sinks/ they are gone

but we shall go forward and fix our eyes on this monster.(35)

While everlasting life is not his destiny, Gilgamesh will leave behind him a name

that endures. “[I] will go to the country where the ceder is felled/ I will set up my

name in the place where names of famous men are written”(32) Thus Gilgamesh

turns his attention away from small personal desires to loftier personal desires

desires that benifit rather than Uruk. To remember from the progue that the walls

of the city, made from cedar taken from the forest, still stand in actuality or imagi-

-nation to proclaim Gilgamesh’s fame, and the very first sentence of the epic attest

to the immortality of his name. But the immortality of a name is less the ability to

live forever than to die. Third and most important, Enkidu teaches Gilgamesh what

it means to be human; he teaches him the meaning of love and compassion, the

meaning of loss and of growing older, the meaning of mortality!!

However similar in the Iliad the main theme of the story is also war, unlike

Gilgamesh there’s two sides having war with each other aswell as themselves and

family. The epic begins with an arguement between the greek king and the chief

fighter. Homer’s outlook on the war itself is unique and compeling as where the

battle between the greeks and the trojans are caused mainly because of a woman.

At the period women where belittled and treated like whores and it was all fine. A

war that was so intense the god Zeus was called upon to help, first off Apollo is

angry because Agamemnon(king of the greeks) has failed to let one of the god’s

priests ransome a daughter, Agamemnon had alloted himself as a war-prize. Ag-

-amemnon reluctantly gives girl up but insists on taking in her place Briseis(achellis

concubine; captured by the greeks) who was originally assigned to Achilles-hence

the “wrath of Achelles,” which is the epic’s announced topic. Achelles complains

to his mother Thetis, who presuades Zeus to let the trojans prevail in battle, until

Achelles’s honor is satisfied. That’s the thing about this war between the Greeks

and Trojans all of the flat characters of these two stories seem’s to be their destiny

to die with honor. Later to find out in the story of the Iliad when the cheif fighter

Hector leads the Trojans through the greeks wall with vingance. Poseidon disobeys

Zeus and help rally the greeks. Poseidon keeps Agamemnon from calling retreat to

the ships, while hera (borrowing a magic girdle from Aprhodite) seduces Zeus and

lulls him to sleep. Hector is wounded by a stone, and the Trojans are driven back.

Zeus wakes up mad at his wife and sends Apollo to heal Hector, who comes back

and burns the Greek ships.

Later on, Hector reproaches himself for not having retreated at the first

appearance of the Achilles. He goes out to meet Achilles in single combat and is

slain. So he finally met his destiny. Achilles ties his body behind a chariot and drag

it off to the greek ships.

Finally, these are some contributes whereas the works of Gilgamesh and

the Iliad are the same and virtualy look upon as the choosers of their own true

destiny and that’s DEATH..