Assignments

Blog Schedule

Close Reading

Final Project

One Response to Assignments

  1. r.ratnayake says:
    September 17, 2015 at 12:50 am

    EPIC OF GILGAMISH_Ramyani Ratnayake
    This is a true story of a priest King of the city state of URUK in southern Mesopotamia. He probably ruled around 2700 B.C.E. He was a very powerful and a strong ruler that was believed 2/3rd divine and 1/3rd human.
    At the beginning of the story it shows that he was a dictator and he did not displayed any divine or human qualities at all. He was noted as an adamant, and equally arrogant prince who abused his power. He used all his power to control his subjects for an example in page 101, line 60 “Gilgamesh would leave no son to his father” line 65″Gilgamish would leave no girl to her mother”. This shows how abusive Gilgamesh was.
    Later he became friends with Enkidu, who was created by the birth goddess Aruru in order to control the arrogance of Gilgamesh and bring peace to Uruk. This friendship helped Gilgamesh change his behavior and began to see the world differently.
    Especially the death of Enkidu brought Gilgamesh with mortality. He mourned for him seven days and nights. He denied that his friend was dead until when he sees a worm creeps out of the corpse’s nose.
    I think, this depicts that he turned in to more human than divine. Isn’t this some what similar that all human beings reacts towards a death of a loved one. One time I read a book – The study of death and dying written by Kubler-Ross. According to the writer there are five psychological stages that humans coping with death often experience, 1/ Denial (not me or her, must be a mistake), 2/ Anger (Why me, him or her), 3/ Bargaining (if I am allowed to live I promise…), 4/ Depression (Its really going to happen and I cant do anything about it) 5/ Acceptance (ready to face it).
    When I was reading the story, I felt that Gilgamesh would have gone through all the above phases.
    Pg. 138 line 45, He denied “why Enkidu? who went with me through every hardship… the fate of mankind has overtaken him”.
    He was Angry, pg138 line 58 “How can I be silent, how can I hold my peace”?.
    Bargaining, pg139 line 89-93 “If need be I’ll cross the sea, If not I’ll roam the steppe”.
    Depression, pg 148 line 225-235 “she baked his daily loaves for him put them one after the other by his head then dated the wall each day he slept”.
    Acceptance, pg143 line 245 shows he accepted the death. “God establish death and life by they did not reveal the time of the death”.
    After reading the story it was my understanding that Gilgamesh was more human than divine.

Comments are closed.