Who Is Gilgamesh Selfish

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Gilgamesh In the beginning of the epic, Gilgamesh is a tyrant and exploits his rights as king. He’s arrogant, spiteful, restless, powerful, impulsive, and does whatever he wants to whomever. For instance, “Gilgamesh sounds the tocsin for his amusement; his arrogance has no bounds by day or night. No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all, even the children. His lust leaves no virgin to her lover, neither the warrior’s daughter nor the wife of the noble”( The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, 63). He is two thirds god and one third man, and he has beauty, strength, and is fearless. Because of these things, “He lords it over the people”( The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, 65). From beginning to end his personality does a one hundred eighty degree turn. His looks diminish, he becomes compassionate, and he is very afraid of death. He is no longer that carefree ass he was in the beginning. Once he realizes he is not an immortal god, he becomes a little obsessed with his destiny and eternal life. He has made many journeys that have made him older and wiser. By the end of the epic, Gilgamesh has experienced life, love, death, grief, and despair. Even though he has god in him, in the end, he is still “only human”. Gilgamesh wants to leave his mark behind and he does. Enlil decrees, “Of mankind, all that are known,…show more content…
The Mesopotamians seemed to be a superstitious people needing to believe in a higher power(s) for comfort and peace of mind regarding things they didn’t or couldn’t readily understand. Being an enlightened people, they longed for true knowledge but in its absence embraced the unexplainable by virtue of acceptance of the unseen. As evidence by The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamians worshipped their own particular gods, not unlike people today, thousands of years

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