The Song of Roland is an epic about a battle between Christians and Pagans. Pagans were anybody that wasn’t Christian. This battle takes place in Rencesvals on August 15, 778. This was a battle that lost the lives of tens of thousands of men. Few people came out of this alive. In the Song of Roland it mainly focuses on Roland and Oliver. Readers don’t really find much out about anyone during the battle but Roland, Oliver (Roland’s best friend), and King Charlemagne. After years and years of the story being told someone wrote it down and now many stories have sprouted from it. This is an epic that has been told for years and will continue to be learned. All great epics follow a similar journey pattern. This pattern typically goes in the order …show more content…
Sometimes it is to help the hero but sometimes it is just another obstacle for the hero to pass through. It can also be both, depending on the epic. In the Song of Roland, readers see many different interferences from God because it is a story of Christians fighting non-christians. They see all that happens to them God's doings because that is their faith and the way the religion works. They put all things in God. A big interference of the Gods that does happen in the Song of Roland is when God takes care of the light so that Charlemagne can catch up to the Pagans to end the battle with the victory. We see a major interference of the Gods in Gilgamesh when Ishtar forces her father to send the Bull of Heaven down to kill Gilgamesh for throwing her acts in her face (which she did not like at all). Although this plan doesn’t work out like she wanted, someone very close to him did die, Enkidu. This really kicked Gilgamesh’s quest into its real start. In the epic of Beowulf, there is a specific interference of the Gods to Beowulf. In the battle between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother a light shines on a weapon just when Beowulf needs one in the scene, this is very much thought to be shown to him by the Gods. Not all epics have the interference of a God and not all lean good or bad but many epics do have some sort of help from the God’s given in the book to one party or the …show more content…
In Beowulf, the reward for him happens a few times. First he gets rewarded when he goes to save the people from Grendel which stops a feud between Geatland and Heorot. He has jewels and prizes sent back to the King Geatland. Next, he stops Grendel’s mother which gains him spot as the King of Heorot. His last reward was for them to follow through with what he asked for before the dragon took the last of him. I don’t really think there is much of a reward in the Song of Roland, if anything the reward is that King Charlemagne does end up winning the battle that he lost so many men to. Personally, I believe that the reward for Gilgamesh is that he learns about life and loss. Losing Enkidu changed Gilgamesh and made him realize exactly what he was afraid of and what he