The Hero's Journey In The Epic Of Gilgamesh And Enkidu

We always expect the hero in a story to be the main character-it makes sense. Most books, TV shows and movies follow this formula, although there’s an important exception. This exception is a book written 5,000 years ago, The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Stephen Mitchell. The two main characters in this story are half-god half-humans: Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In the book, the king of Uruk is Gilgamesh, and he rules and terrorizes the many people who are under his rule. The overbearing gods and goddesses in the story create Enkidu to counteract his manipulation. Gilgamesh and Enkidu end up becoming best friends and going on many (unnecessary, but) epic journeys and quests together. Even though the book was written 5,000 years ago, it follows a template that many other action books follow, called the Hero’s Journey. This template provides an arc to the book that starts with the departure of the hero, reaches the climax with initiation and ends with the return of the hero, who have mastered themselves and the worlds around them by the end of the book. The epic of Gilgamesh follows the Hero’s journey, but even though the book …show more content…
In the text, an example of this is “They took their weapons, the massive axes, the massive knives, the quivers, the bows” (p.103). This portion of the story introduces Enkidu’s quest to kill the monster Humbaba with his friend Gilgamesh. Along this journey, he gets tested in multiple ways, including the responsibility of physically and emotionally supporting his overwhelmed friend and fighting the bull of heaven. He also completes the “return” portion of the Hero’s Journey by becoming the master of two worlds- he leads the kingdom of Uruk with Gilgamesh and is master of his mind by confronting his fate. By completing all of the steps in the hero’s journey, Enkidu has proved that he is, in fact, the true