The Epic Of Gilgamesh: Two Themes

MONOMYTH COMPARATIVE PAPER- ENGLISH 402 PROJECT 1 The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Ramayana, and The Lord of the Rings are all important contemporary epics that continue to influence the world immensely because they have various themes, forms of symbolism, and motifs used for learning experiences in the modern times. Stories are made to portray ideas that bring food for thought onto the table. The themes that these four-works share are friendship, duty, life/death, and adventure; each have great importance because each explore values that are memorable and influential. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the theme of friendship is the first common theme of shared between stories and explored. Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk; a cocky jerk who is

Enkidu was almost in every way the same as Gilgamesh a handsome, smart, and powerful man. The main difference between the two was that Enkidu was a man of high ethical standard the polar-opposite of Gilgamesh, and through Enkidu’s journey with Gilgamesh the latter was able to mature a great deal, but at the same time it was that same maturity which cost Enkidu his life. Since Gilgamesh rejected Ishtar the goddess’s advances later during their travels he had rejected humanity and pitted his newfound companion’s life away by the god’s wrath, since sex was a motif of humanity. For example Enkidu got his humanity from Ishtar’s temple priestess, by laying with her in bed for seven nights. Gilgamesh flat out rejected because he changed his old ways and realized that he didn’t need to sleep with anyone

In the Iliad Achilles was a major factor of the story, but he didn’t participate in much of the war until after a certain point. Achilles’ best friend Patroclus took it upon himself to take Achilles’ armor a motif of a hero. When Patroclus went out to war with Achilles’ armor it boosted the moral of all of Patroclus’ troops and upset the opposing side which led the Achaeans to victory because the Trojans thought it was the ace of the Achaeans. Eventually after that event Patroclus was slain by Hector and Hermes which caused great grief to Achilles since he was basically a brother to him, and caused him take up his weapon and shield to join the front lines of the Trojan War. His shield was a symbol of life as it described every aspect of life and not only war. Achilles could remember that there were not only warriors in the world but also different kinds of people, his role was the leader of the Achaeans that would lead them to victory. In this sense the shield tells us that everyone in the world plays a role in something. The importance of this is that if you skip out on things that you should be doing it can cause a lot of regret and pain in only you but others. Imagine if you had an essay to do and it was worth a great portion of your grade, but you procrastinated and didn’t do it. You’d regret the decisions made because of laziness, that would inhibit your goals for initiating the course in the