Similarities And Differences Between The Epic Of Gilgamesh And The Odyssey

Mr. Keating was right; literature, whether transmitted orally or in written text served in many ways to develop the worlds’ perspectives on religion, history and human existence. It is through our sharing, reading and understanding of literature and orated stories, that we come to realize that as humans, we share variations of the same life experiences and struggles as any other human, regardless of culture or even time. Despite the distinct cultures and time periods of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Bible, and the Odyssey, these three pieces of literature share striking similarities in the way they depict lessons of self-identity, morality, mortality, and the power of higher beings. How will you be remembered? Characters in The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey struggled with this very question. Though already a God-King born of the goddess Ninsun, Gilgamesh wanted his name to live on beyond his death. This leads on a quest for fame, to slay the mighty cedar forest guardian, Humbaba. In the Odyssey, Telemachus, having come of age and the man of the house, must also establish a name in his own right. To do so, the goddess Athena guides him on an adventure to find his lost father, Odysseus. Though the motives behind each of these two examples are different they both tell a tale of a character that struggle with solidifying their sense of self. In the readings we see that those with a weak moral compass fail or are punished, while those who are just fulfill their