In humanities, we have just finished The Epic of Gilgamesh. Personally, I enjoyed this book so much because it spoke of values that writers nowadays lack.
In the beginning of the Epic of Gilgamesh, I did not percive Gilgamesh as a hero. He was spoiled, opressive, and greedy. Despite this, he grew into an epic hero by the time the book reached the end. Gilgamesh transformed into an epic hero because when he is finally gets to the resevoir for to which he must dive into to uproot the plant of life from the bottom. Once he did get the plant, he thinks that he has finally succeeded in his quest, but while he is not looking, a snake eats the plant. He had continued to persevere through the project, but he was faced with a setback. Gilgamesh's true colors show in this chapter because he had wanted to share the Plant of Life with Uruk's men. He accepted defeat and mortality in this chapter. Also, Gilgamesh defeated the Bull of Heaven when Ishtar sent it down. This shows that he posesses great power and confidence if he is able to stand up the beast and slay it. Also, when Ishtar, the goddess of love bribes him to marry her, she stands up to the heartless woman by bringing up examples of the terrible things she had done to past "lovers." This shows that Gilgamesh is larger then temptation. He is will not let things that are bad but tempting get to him.
The values of acient Mesopotamian society compare to our values today?
In ancient Mesopotamia, the people valued, among many things, peace, religion, and curiousity. Some of those things still shine through nowadays, but are faded. They are like old paintings. Back then, they were vivid and detailed, now they are faded. Nowadays, some of the things that we value are technology, power, and social status. We are so caught up in things like "who has the newest iPhone." We have forgotten to enjoy the little things in life, because one day, we will realize that they were the big things that we had missed out on. This is what the book Gilgamesh highlights. The things that have stayed with us since Mesopotamian days. These are things like curiousity, achievments, friendship and family.
Hey, Tashi
ResponderExcluirI thought that your responses were really detailed and insightfully explained. When explaining how Gilgamesh is a hero, maybe you should add a little more background information, instead of just listing events from the book. Did you perceive him as a hero in the beginning? However, you did a great job incorporating the qualities of a hero into your answer to support it. I agree with your perspective on modern values compared to Ancient Mesopotamian values. The simile you used to compare beliefs to old paintings was perfectly fitting for the response. Although I agree with your ideas, a way you could improve it is to go into more details with individual Mesopotamian beliefs (peace, religion, curiosity) rather than comparing them to the modern values in a very general way. Your point of our values being shallow compared to the ones highlighted in Gilgamesh was strong and very convincing. Great job on the response!