Gilgamesh: Hero or not a Hero - Essay Example

In Gilgamesh epic, there are several journeys that are experienced by the King Gilgamesh as he rules over Uruk. However this essay describes some of the moral/ethical journey, physical journey and emotional journey that the king undertakes and how it has an effect on his life and that of his people. Is there a relationship between these journey undertaken by the king and the way that his people live? This is the main question of discussion in this paper. There are a lot of ethical journeys that are undertaken in this epic.

Gilgamesh is a tyrannical king who rules by the use of force. He uses the women as wants and on the other hand takes what he wants from the people. On top of this, he overworks his people and generally considered a bad king. This makes the people to cry out to the gods to come to their aid and soon god creates Enkidu. After some few disagreements the two become friends and n the end they both work together to fight for the people of Uruk. This is a big transformation from a bad king who used to take all his peoples things to one who fights for their survival and goes to the extreme of even organizing defense against the gods who have sent the bull to destroy the people and cause an epic.

This can be seen as an ethical journey as the king moves from being bad to good and it has an impact on the lives of the people of Uruk as this transforms their lives (Mason 34). When Enkidu dies, the king sets of for the edge of the world where he finds information about the way that people lived during the deluge. He also learns about some of the secrets of the gods. He writes this on a stone tablets and sets for home. His movement from this home to this point cans b seen as a physical journey in which the king physically moves to another point.

This journey is important to both the king and his people as he gets to have the knowledge about secrets of the gods and how to overcome them. As a result, these changes the lives of the people as the king later