The Epic Of Gilgamesh, By Ralph Waldo

Overall women are very important and powerful parts in Gilgamesh, and technically there would not be an Epic of Gilgamesh without the powerful roles that they

The story starts off with Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, who is one third man and two thirds god. This story is about a man's quest for immortality in addition to the importance of boundaries between the realms of animal, man and gods. Women symbolize the importance of locative boundaries in the text. These boundaries are set by the harlot Shamhat, Ishtar, Siduri, the tavern keeper, Ninsun and Utanapishtim's wife. By giving women this role of wisdom and boundary enforcement, The Epic of Gilgamesh reflects how Mesopotamian society actually valued women.

The Epic of Gilgamesh follows a tale of two brothers tasked with defeating an all-powerful beast, yet they aren’t the most important characters in this story. Without their wisdom and guidance, Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s journey would have ended a lot sooner, and Gilgamesh would have still rampaged in Uruk, never bringing peace to those who were below him. Aruru, Shamhat, Ninsun, Ishtar, Siduri, and Utanapishtim’s wife all contribute to Gilgamesh’s journey, and in the end, provide Gilgamesh with the necessary tools in order to transform his character. These women in The Epic of Gilgamesh are essential to the plot, and provide both wisdom and perfection, but can also bring temptation and destruction if given the power to do so.

In this paper, I am going to analyze the female characters that caught my attention the most in the three stories The Epic of Gilgamesh, Thousand and One Nights, and Candide. They all are important characters in each of the stories and their influence in the story is to help. These stories also depict how women were being treated during these times such as being used for their bodies or their wisdom. The characters that I will be analyzing in the paper are Shamhat, Shiduri, Sharazad, the Old Woman, and Cunegonde. In all three stories, they mostly share the same depictions of the role of women and how women weren’t really important besides their bodies.

About 2700 years ago there lived a king by the name of Gilgamesh who ruled the city of Uruk in Mesopotamia now known to us as modern day Iraq. Parts of his life are written on clay tablets believed to be the oldest existing written story of a man’s life. (XI). “The epic of Gilgamesh”, is the story of his quest for eternal life. In this paper I will be writing about the influence that the women in his life have played in his quest.

In Genesis one and 2, it provides a full understanding of God’s creations and wisdom of human nature because it is free from evil. God created everything from nothing; to be perfect from his perspective. Human nature is revealed from Genesis one with God creating the Earth and the Heavens and creating the man of his likeness. The Bible explains how God created the man named Adam from the dust and was placed in the Eden’s Garden (Genesis 2:7). Adam helped God to take care of the land and all his creation. The Bible explains, Humanity was created to work and serve, keep the garden (Genesis 2:15). Subsequently, Eve was created; “God had created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Adam and Eve would help God because He wanted them to multiply the Earth by taking care of his creations (Hiles & Smith, 2014). God is the sovereign ruler which he created humanity as how he should have wanted. The Bible explains about human nature that God created everything to be distinct from animals and all His creation. Humankind is able to show on our nature because we are capable of reasoning. God created all differently and we were all born naked and pure as Adam and Eve were. God created in his own image that why we all look different; we are unique in His eyes. Also, God created us to be good because we are born innocent of all evil and loving God.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender plays a very significant role. While women were not the most powerful gods nor the strongest or wisest of humans, they still had tremendous influence. Though the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, women did not play a necessarily minor role. With all the women that play a role in the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender is a topic worthy of discussion.

Although men are the Epic characters of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey, women also play a very important role in both stories. In general, these two stories portray women as being overly sexual, deceptive, and having a power over men. Women use their sexuality to hold control over men, to confuse and deceive them.

The Epic of Gilgamesh chronicles the life of the great warrior and hero Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is not great hero because he is moral. In fact he is feared because "a goddess made him, strong as a savage bull, none can withstand his arms" (1). This phrase underlines the terrible power of femininity, in the view of the Mesopotamian culture that produced the text. On one hand, the female principle is responsible for creation. On the other hand, the female principle also has the ability to destroy: the epic takes a largely dim perspective of humanity, and often, by extension of women, because the source of all creation is a goddess, Aruru. Aruru creates but she also generates suffering.

Changing Women's Roles in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales

Life is full of unexpected challenges; it is how we deal with them that either makes us stronger or weaker as an individual. We either grow up mentally from the challenges we face, or we don’t grow up at all. One challenge that we are all going to have to face, if we haven’t already, is what it feels like to lose a loved one. No matter what we do, we can’t prevent it. We are all going to have to experience grief and learn how to cope with our losses. However, in the story of one man who couldn’t take the fact that someone as powerful as himself could lose a loved one, had no other choice but to learn the hard way of how to cope with his loss. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, a retold story by the best-selling author, Herbert Mason, tells the story of a king who was two thirds god and one third man. He was full of pride and made himself superior to others. Because he was so arrogant and oppressive to his people, it seemed that he needed companionship from someone that was the opposite of himself. He needed a friend that would show him how to be humble and have consideration for others. When he meets and befriends his perfect companion, they become unstoppable as they love and protect one another like brothers. However, these friends couldn’t be more opposite; one was two thirds god and one third man, while the other was an animal like man. This is the story of two beings becoming human together. This is the story of a king who thought that he was so mighty and powerful that he

One possible theme statement for The Epic of Gilgamesh, could be that it is important to overcome trials and obstacles that life may bring to you. For example in the story tells about one of Gilgamesh’s many trials he had to overcome, “Gilgamesh did what the Man-Scorpion said and went through eleven leagues of complete darkness. He could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him”. This quote tells about a specific obstacle Gilgamesh had to overcome while on his difficult journey.

Women in The Epic Of Gilgamesh and Mesopotamian Society In the Epic of Gilgamesh, gender plays a very significant role, because while women were not the most powerful gods nor the strongest or wisest of all humans, they still had tremendous influence over others around them, and even today, over those who study and learn about the women of the time of Mesopotamia. Though the main characters of the story, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, are male, women did not necessarily play a minor role. Throughout The Epic of Gilgamesh, the roles of women are mixed. Women are represented as harlots (Shamhat), as wise (Ninsun), and as gods (Ishtar). There is a substantial amount of gods which are represented as women and it could represent a society with multiple

    Shamhat the harlot and Ishtar the goddess of love are both main female characters in The Epic of Gilgamesh, both representing temptresses. Blue Orchid is a female character from the novel Monkey and she is represented as a powerless woman. Shamhat

In finding his key to immortality, he becomes very excited to bring it back to Uruk with him. The translation makes it unclear whether or not he plans to share it with his people, but if so, then that would show Gilgamesh's generosity, something we did not see before in him. He does not make it home with his bounty of Hunbaba. While Gilgamesh is bathing in a pool, a serpent smelled the fragrance of the plant; it came up from the water and snatched the plant out of his hand. After the product of all his searching is taken from him by an earth-lion, Gilgamesh sat down and cries at this loss, it is a much less dramatic reaction than the one he had when Enkidu died. Understandably so, it is much sadder to lose a friend than to lose a material