— Kelly Leung
The definition of the phrase “great work” to me goes hand-in-hand with the definition of what it means for a work to be a classic, which categorizes a work by the way it teaches life lessons that maintain relevancy and withstand the test of time. There is a list of canonical books that have been read throughout time, such as Moby Dick, which I have personally read in a class as a timeless classic that contained hundreds of relevant themes and underlying lessons. A great work may also be an artifact of the people it came, one that pairs an important and unforgettable lesson with details of a society of the past. It should show the values of people of that time and how they lived.
When I had first read the Epic of GIlgamesh, it was difficult for me to pinpoint to real character development and lesson that Gilgamesh really learned, which made it difficult for me to categorize it as a great work. I think that unless we read the longer version of the epic, including what Gilgamesh did following his journey to see Utanapishtim, it is difficult for the average person to extract the true meaning of the text upon first impression. In class, we discussed a lot about how GIlgamesh did not really change in the end and he remained selfish and violent as he was in the beginning. However, you can see his character development only really shows in the very last page, or even last lines of the epic (that we were given to read), which a lot of us initially missed. From reading some of my peer’s responses to the story, it was clear to me that Gilgamesh’s character development was not quite obvious enough for us to derive a meaningful lesson from the story. For me, it wasn’t until I did some thorough research on the epic until I realized that Gilgamesh had actually changed.
I also find the main lesson about life and death to be very prominent throughout many historical works, and I do not necessarily think that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the best way that it is communicated. Although it was a short epic, I find that a lot of it was focused on the shortcomings of both main characters and was a little bit imbalanced. It did, however, give a detailed story of the values and religion of the people who wrote and read the epic, helping us put together an understanding of the belief systems and philosophies of people in ancient Mesopotamia. Therefore, the Epic of Gilgamesh can certainly be loosely categorized as a “great work” in my opinion, but is not my first choice when it comes to delivery of an important life lesson.
