Theme Of Mortality In The Epic Of Gilgamesh

The journey of discovering mortality also occurred within the epic through Gilgamesh's journey to find immortality. In order to help discover his humanity, Gilgamesh asked himself a series of questions as well as addressed his fear with death directly through these questions. Some of his questioning can be seen here, "I am going to die!--am I not like Enkidu?! Deep sadness penetrates my core, I fear death, and now roam the wilderness...I saw lions, and I was terrified! I raised my head in prayer to Sin" (Carnahan 32). His demonstration of these questions and recognition of his change in behavior due to this fear helps show how the epic demonstrates the lack of acceptance of death. Gilgamesh refuses to accept death and this is why he seeks immortality from Utnapishtim. Thus, the Epic of Gilgamesh was created under the purpose of questioning death, mortality, and what it means to be human. The …show more content…
It is stated in the video that "The degree of uncertainty that you have to deal with now as the doctor is hard to describe how much greater it is than it ever was before. Because there is so much innovation and because of how rapidly it evolves there's almost always something else that we can do to put off the inevitable" (Video). The fear of death is clearly seen within this quote due to the constant drive to prevent death of the patient. Another statement to exhibit this fear is when it was said that "The way progress is made, the way advances occur, requires pushing to the very edge and pushing very hard" (Video). Therefore, the drive of the family and the drive of the doctors to prevent the inevitable can relate to the epic due to the fact that these people want to avoid death and the uncertainty that lies with whether or not the patient will be able to