Under Gods’ Influence

It is clear how gods have always had an importance in history with what has to do with the right and the wrong way but in this tablet, the gods are the main plot. Gilgamesh’s relationship with the gods gives us an idea of how people and rulers used the gods to represent everything in their daily lives.
After Gilgamesh rejects Ishtar, it is clear how peoples’ future were in the hands of the gods. In my personal life, the gods take an important role in what I do but they don’t have a direct relationship with me. One could say they are our models but they aren’t personalities. Through repetition, the narrator gets the reader’s attention on how powerful something is. For example, when they talk about the effect the Bull of Heaven had on the earth. “Euphrates shook. The city of Uruk shook and the earth broke open under the great bull noise.” -Pg. 33 This gives a special importance to the magnificence of the bull and how the brother’s made a great effort to destroy him.

Friends as close as Gilgamesh and Enkidu are hard to find. Being helpful with a friend is something completely different to risking your life to protect your close one’s life. “The life of man is short, let us contend with the bull of Heaven, and Win” –Pg. 34 “Two people, companions, they can prevail together.” -Pg. 34 They give each other what they need to surpass each barrier that life puts in front of them. “Why I am left to live while my brother dies? Why should he die while I am spared to live?” -Pg. 38 Gilgamesh shows indifference for life or death. As he speaks one easily catches that living is irrelevant if he doesn’t live with Enkidu. The tragic ending of Enkidu shows how one is completely incompetent when somebody is dying. It is as if our blood freezes or we just have nothing to say. “Gilgamesh, who encouraged me in the battle, saying, ‘Two people, companions, they can prevail,’ Gilgamesh is afraid and does not help me!” –Pg. 43 Their unity and friendship was broken by ignorance and fear which not only resulted in Enkidu’s death but a complete shift of energy to our poem.

I still don’t know the concrete idea of the poem, as one would, in a linear story. I hope to find out more of Gilgamesh’s character and traits in the next tablets. What is Gilgamesh’s next mission?