Revenge and Its Totality

The tablets date from the seventh vitamin C B.C. The time of the tale is one in which hu patch beings matt-up close to the gods and felt that the gods intervened in their lives. Gilgamesh is a ruler who is seen as too devoted to war, and the gods hear the lament of the people and publicize their own created hero, Enkidu, to do battle with Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh defeats Enkidu, after which they are friends. They trammel discover together against Humbaba to do battle. When Gilgamesh refuses the marriage proposal of the goddess of love, Ishtar, she sends a divine bull against him, a form of divine revenge, and he and Enkidu kill it. Enkidu dreams that he must die for his role in killing the bull, and he does die--the goddess exacts her revenge for being defied. Gilgamesh seeks a carriage to see that his friend is granted eternal life and sets out on a journey to meet the one man who survived the Great Flood. Gilgamesh is a brutal warrior when called upon to fight for himself or his people, and he can also express himself in acts of unselfishness and duty such(prenominal) as those he undertakes for his friend.

Many of the elements in this desperate can be found in former(a) epics, from the journey as a quest for some proceeds to the slaying of a creature sent to do destruction. The epic also echoes certain social values in its jubilancy of the hero, its reverence for the gods, and its belief in the ruler-hero as a god himself. The people of this time also believe in depute and p

lace their fate in the hands of the gods, and that fate is usually conveyed by means of dreams or other portents. Gilgamesh lives in a way that is ordained by the gods. The leader is seen as embodying the fate, security, and stability of the people and their kingdom. When Gilgamesh dies, the people lament. every(prenominal) aspect of life is ascribed to a god or gods--the last of Gilgamesh is attributed to Ereshkigal, the Queen of Death. The people see the world as a place of dangers, ruled by different gods who behave as rulers of their particular kingdom. Humbaba is such a ruler, and his domain is the forest cognize as "the Country of the Living.

" The people value the warlike efficacy of Gilgamesh because he can protect them from these other gods, as substantially as from other rules who might attack them. At the identical time, as is shown in the creation of Enkidu, Gilgamesh himself is ruled by the gods and field of operation to their strictures, though his strength and power are such that he becomes a god himself in the end. The gods speak to individuals through their dreams, and dreams name the future and provide lessons which come directly from the gods. In such a world, revenge becomes a motivating force because every action is seen as having a reason that is personal and direct at the aggrieved individual directly. Kindness can be seen when a friend takes up the role of avenger for someone else who has been so punished by the gods.

Homer expresses the brutality of war non only in his descriptions of the fighting but of its consequences, such as when he describes the way surgery is conducted on the battlefield (XI, 209-210). thither is certainly brutality in the accounts of individual deaths, as when Pandarus is killed by an arrow through his mouth, shattering his teeth and slicing his language (V, 83).

at the shelters, and as he was; now here is the twelfth dawn

The kindness of the gods is also experienced in the way they get and punish individuals. The central cha
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