Similarities Between Gilgamesh And Fight Club

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Many thousands of years separate the writing of the ancient tale “Epic of Gilgamesh” and the modern day movie “Fight Club” and yet there are many commonalities in the journey the anti-heroes explore in finding a better person within themselves. The narrator in Fight Club is caught up in his miserable, boring life and struggling with insomnia and depression while Gilgamesh is a bully in his role as king in search of immortality. As anti-heroes they are the central character that lacks certain heroic qualities of courage or morality, however, a hero emerges in these very different stories. The theme of the heroes’ re-education in both stories show similarities in how the anti-heroes grow from their perceived version of their masculinity to a …show more content…

Gilgamesh and the narrator are parallels both sharing the anti-hero role. The two main characters both start off with two different lifestyles with one being depressed and the other egotistical. The narrator in Fight Club believes that no one cares for him and that he is almost invisible. He believes that he is lower than the average man and that he barely is a man. Gilgamesh thinks the opposite, that he is the highest up and that no one looks down to him but that everyone must look up to him and show him respect. These two main characters go through different experiences to both end with the same theme of true masculinity and who they want to become. The heroes are re-educated throughout the stories of who they really are and not the perceived version that everyone thinks they should be. Fight Club and the Epic of Gilgamesh both can be viewed as complicating one another based on how you look at the stories. Gilgamesh went through a lot of adventure and obstacles by himself to reach his true masculinity. Unlike Gilgamesh, in Fight Club the narrator does not go through near as much but also has Tyler Durden to hold his hand and guide him to his masculinity that he is in search for. Fight Club is a complicated movie that has numerous themes and life lessons that can be drawn from it. It can be seen as more complicated than Gilgamesh because of its psychological thriller nature. The narrator experiences schizophrenia and insomnia which we can see the the complexity nature of the brain. These stories are in many ways parallel with the common goal of finding ones’ true self. The women in both of these stories share a similarity of both introducing the heroes to the second heroes or in the case of Fight Club face the other version of