Blooms Literary Themes - THE HEROS ... - ymerleksi - home

The Epic of Gilgamesh 71Enkidu’s death, described at great length in the poem, is dreadful forGilgamesh, who watches with him for twelve days and is inconsolableafter his death.He covered his friend’s face like a bride,swooping down over him like an eagle,and like a lioness deprived of her cubshe keeps pacing to and fro.He shears off his curls and heaps them onto the ground,ripping off his finery and casting it away as an abomination.(70–71; VIII, 47–52)His grief is understandable and his mourning is extreme: sacrificingto the gods, disregarding his own person, and commissioning a richand elaborate statue of his friend.But the strongest result of Endiku’s death is Gilgamesh’s realizationthat he, too, can die. As his expedition against Humbabamarked his exterior journey, Gilgamesh’s awareness of death marksa stage in Gilgamesh’s inner, or psychological, journey. This is a manwho has seen people die (during the Bull of Heaven episode, forinstance) and who even declared in Tablet II, “As for human beings,their days are numbered” (20, II, 230). But apparently he neverrealized he shared their fate. Perhaps Gilgamesh in his pride washeedless; perhaps he reasoned from his undoubted superiority toall the other people he had ever met that he was exempt from theirmortality. The death of Enkidu sobers him:I am going to die!—am I not like Enkidu?!Deep sadness penetrates my core,I fear death, and now roam the wilderness—I will set out to the region of Utanapishtim, son of Ubartutu,and will go with utmost dispatch! (75; ix, 2–5)Here begins the most important part of the hero’s journey in The Epicof Gilgamesh. Utanapishtim is an ancient king who alone survived theflood (a sort of analogue to the biblical Noah), living at the Mouth ofthe Rivers, the most remote place there is. Newly anxious about death,Gilgamesh proposes to find Utanapishtim and discover the secret of