What Makes Gilgamesh A True Hero

A True Hero “Hard times do not create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed,” said Bob Riley. Society has misinterpreted heroes as people who wear caps or who can fly. All heroes do not want to be famous for their impudent acts. Even Gilgamesh had portrayed imputed acts, he has not only considered himself a hero, and his people did too. Society believes that Gilgamesh’s values and beliefs affect what really makes him a hero. Especially, when it all had started with Enkidu’s Death, Gilgamesh’s Journey, and Return to Uruk. Among Gilgamesh’s obstacles and challenges, into bringing Enkidu back to life, Gilgamesh was not the man or god everyone thought. Gilgamesh was abhorred by many of his people, they
Gilgamesh was a God who had done everything and anything to his people of Uruk. Even though, it was okay, he was still considered a hero type. Americans such as, policemen, and soldiers are truly considered heroes which they are people who fight for our freedom and to make us as a country and society to feel safer. Mason explains “When he arrived in the mountains of Mashu, whose peaks reach to the shores of Heaven and whose roots descend to Hell, he saw The Scorpion people who guard its gate, whose knowledge is awesome, but whose glance is death. When he saw them, his face turned ashen with dismay, but he bowed down to them, the only way to shield himself against effusions of their gaze. The scorpion man then recognized In Gilgamesh the flesh of gods and told his wife: This one is two thirds god, one-third man and can survive our view, then spoke to him: Why have you come this route to us? The way arduous and long and no one goes beyond. I have come to see my father,* Utnapishtim,” (56-57).Here it shows how Gilgamesh was developing the qualities of a hero, just so Enkidu can have eternal life. This also shows how his personality changed because before he rapacious towards others and now since Enkidu has died, he had started to realize how life and a hero are really supposed to be. “Enkidu was ignorant of oldness. He ran with the animals, drank at their springs not knowing
Through this journey he had risked himself just to bring Enkidu back. The epic explains,” He cut the stones loose from his feet and rose up sharply to the surface and swam to shore. He was calling out, I have it, and I have it! Urshanabi guided the ecstatic man away to the shore, and when they parted Gilgamesh was alone again, but not with loneliness or the memory of death. He stopped drinking and rest beside the pool and soon undressed and let himself slip in. The water quietly until he refreshed, leaving the plant ungraded on the ground. A serpent he smelled its sweet fragrance and saw its chance to come from the water, and devoured the plant, shedding its skin as slough. When Gilgamesh rose from the pool, his naked body glistening and refreshed, the plant was gone; the discarded skin of a serpent was all he saw. He sat down on the ground, and wept” (85-87). Here it explains how Enkidu had put his life on the edge and how he felt when he found that Enkidu wasn’t coming back to life at all. Gilgamesh had ended his journey and went back to the City of Uruk. Gilgamesh was very upset about how his journey had ended without Enkidu. “In time he recognized this loss. As the end of his journey and returned to Uruk” (91). Gilgamesh had tried every obstacle and challenge that the gods have given him but had finally realized