Epic Heroes Essay

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Epic heroes are different than your standard everyday hero. Scholars have defined and epic hero as a god-like human being. An epic hero, defined by, Dictionary. Com, “a brave noble character in an epic poem admired for great achievement or affected by grand events.” (www.Dictionary .com) These heroes have been created through poems and stories, in order for man to understand the separation between himself and the spiritual presence in his life. Every society/culture since the creation of man has created this type of hero to embody the values and mores of that time period. To be thought of as an epic hero the character must be endowed with specific traits. A few of these traits are: having great stature, always larger than life, have traits most valued by that society (i.e. tremendous courage, humility, super human strength.) a quick wit accompanied by extraordinary intelligence and a perspicacity for the journeys he must endure and the adversaries that he will have to thwart. Although, epic heroes are created to be a personification of perfection, they also have flaws. These flaws can be used against them by their enemies or even themselves. An essential part of becoming an epic hero is over conquering those flaws or learning to work with them. The two texts that we read contained to easily distinguishable epic heroes. The first text, is the epic poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Here we are introduced to our first “epic hero” King Gilgamesh. “Gilgamesh is an unstable compound of two parts god and one part man. He is thought of as the greatest of all men, and yet his virtues and his flaws our outsized. “(SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Epic of Gilgamesh.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2004. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.) Gilgamesh, King of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk, was both feared and adorned by the populace of his kingdom. How Gilgamesh endured
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