Within the first section of reading from Forsyth’s The Old Enemy, many aspects about the Epic of Gilgamesh are being explained; namely, the differences in the versions that have been recorded and found, the contradictions of Huwawa (Humbaba), and the connections between The Epic of Gilgamesh and Christianity.
Because the stone tablets that have been found are often missing words, lines or whole sections it is most difficult to create a completed version of this epic. Lucky, the Epic of Gilgamesh became most popular as the “story survived several versions and languages: each of the major cultures of the ancient Near East had its own highly developed tradition of the epic song and…there was considerable influence and overlapping among them” …show more content…
To bring more evidence to this confusion, later in the tale Gilgamesh disrespects a god and as such she sends down the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh for his insolence. Instead of being humbled for his rudeness, he kills the Bull of Heaven. As a result, the gods curse Gilgamesh’s companion Enkidu to death. Still, Gilgamesh is not following the gods wishes but is continued to be the hero of the story.
Though Gilgamesh is not following the more modern characteristics of a hero, Forsyth has some interesting insight on the matter regarding the forest which Gilgamesh cuts down and Huwawa:
On one level it is a real forest, on another level it is the dark wood of later tradition, but it is also a tragic world, in which good intentions produce their opposite: a world of uncertain moral values, even beyond good and evil, with the qualities that make the world’s great epics stand out from the rest. This is not simply because Huwawa represents a world of personal nightmare, important as that is to the power of the poem, but because he embodies one of the basic dilemmas of civilization itself” (42)
It is true that Gilgamesh’s actions seem to be poorly thought out and show how prideful he is but when his relationship with Enkidu is better understood, Gilgamesh’s actions are more …show more content…
After Gilgamesh is in a position to kill Huwawa, Huwawa pleads with Gilgamesh to save his life. Gilgamesh hesitates but Enkidu encourages him to kill the evil creature and so Gilgamesh does. When the Bull of Heaven comes to kill the two for killing Huwawa, the circumstances Gilgamesh more reason to kill it—to save the life of a friend. This friendship with Enkidu is so strong that when he dies it would seem that “The poem turns on the ambivalence of the human attitude to death: Gilgamesh first courts heroic death in battle and then seeks to avoid it altogether… blind until too late to the real nature of the adventure he seeks” (34) and the story becomes one of
Because the stone tablets that have been found are often missing words, lines or whole sections it is most difficult to create a completed version of this epic. Lucky, the Epic of Gilgamesh became most popular as the “story survived several versions and languages: each of the major cultures of the ancient Near East had its own highly developed tradition of the epic song and…there was considerable influence and overlapping among them” …show more content…
To bring more evidence to this confusion, later in the tale Gilgamesh disrespects a god and as such she sends down the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh for his insolence. Instead of being humbled for his rudeness, he kills the Bull of Heaven. As a result, the gods curse Gilgamesh’s companion Enkidu to death. Still, Gilgamesh is not following the gods wishes but is continued to be the hero of the story.
Though Gilgamesh is not following the more modern characteristics of a hero, Forsyth has some interesting insight on the matter regarding the forest which Gilgamesh cuts down and Huwawa:
On one level it is a real forest, on another level it is the dark wood of later tradition, but it is also a tragic world, in which good intentions produce their opposite: a world of uncertain moral values, even beyond good and evil, with the qualities that make the world’s great epics stand out from the rest. This is not simply because Huwawa represents a world of personal nightmare, important as that is to the power of the poem, but because he embodies one of the basic dilemmas of civilization itself” (42)
It is true that Gilgamesh’s actions seem to be poorly thought out and show how prideful he is but when his relationship with Enkidu is better understood, Gilgamesh’s actions are more …show more content…
After Gilgamesh is in a position to kill Huwawa, Huwawa pleads with Gilgamesh to save his life. Gilgamesh hesitates but Enkidu encourages him to kill the evil creature and so Gilgamesh does. When the Bull of Heaven comes to kill the two for killing Huwawa, the circumstances Gilgamesh more reason to kill it—to save the life of a friend. This friendship with Enkidu is so strong that when he dies it would seem that “The poem turns on the ambivalence of the human attitude to death: Gilgamesh first courts heroic death in battle and then seeks to avoid it altogether… blind until too late to the real nature of the adventure he seeks” (34) and the story becomes one of