For both hero’s, Gilgamesh and Odysseus, the entire theme is set around their journey of finding their purpose as a man, and more importantly a ruler. They both set out on a quest for dominance of some degree and ended up becoming humbled while finding the great leader they were capable of being from the beginning. The two separate journeys of Gilgamesh and Odysseus help each of them to develop from kings to mature leaders.
While Odysseus’s journey in The Odyssey begins at the end of his defeat in the Trojan war, his return home is his biggest triumph. His trials and tribulations from the God’s are brought on from his own over-confidence of his cleverness and wittiness - his greatest assets also proved to be his biggest downfall. Odysseus’s quest was only to return home to his wife and child with his crew, but that fell short when he offended the God of the sea, Poseidon, by blinding his son the Cyclops to escape. Odysseus’s fault came when he decided to mock the Cyclops and announce his name to him in such a taunting manner, “You savage! But you got yours in the end, Didn’t you?” (Pg. 436 line 475) In which the
…show more content…
Even though her role is not significant in the beginning, Shamhat is the person who brought Enkidu out from the wild and became the medium between him and the civilized world she was attempting to bring him into. Shamhat ‘raised’ Enkidu to be civilized and the shed to wilderness from him. This is a protagonist role because without Enkidu, Gilgamesh may have never been able to feel remorse for his kingdom and become humble enough to be proud of his people. Shamhat’s role differs much from Gilgamesh in the fact that she may not have fought any physical battles, but she did fight an emotional battle with Enkidu, forming him into a man. I know how difficult it is to make a modern man civil, so I can only imagine how much of a daunting task this was with a man raised in the