Serpents

After Utnapishitim told Gilgamesh about the flood, his disappointment was clearly obvious because the flood was not going to repeat itself, and therefore he would never gain immortality. However, he then found the magical plant at the bottom of the sea, but later on lost it to a serpent. Once again, I found a connection to the Bible. Because Gilgamesh lost the plant he lost immortality, just as Adam and Eve lost the Garden of Eden to a snake. This time the serpent tempted Eve into taking a bite of the Forbidden Fruit, and so God forced them into exile. I wanted to make reference to how the serpent is often a symbol of evil, not only in classic texts. For example, in Harry Potter Lord Voldemort owns a snake, and the symbol of Slytherin is also a snake. Both of these are evil, making the snake a representation of evil in this famous novel. Another example is the Jungle Book. The evil animal is the snake, and all he wants to do is kill Mowgli. My last example is one that is not a very known movie, called Ella Enchanted. Here, the snake is owned by an evil man, but the snake is also bad itself. All if wants to do is kill the prince in order to gain the crown, and he comes very close to it. As you can see, the snake is very often the symbol for bad, in fact, I believe that it is the most used animal for this purpose. My only question is, what did the snake do to us that caused such hatred towards them?

Noah´s Ark

Since the very beginning of Tablet XI, I found many similarities to one of the stories published in the Bible, one called Noah´s Ark. In this Bible version, God was upset with his people because he thought they were all evil and did not deserve to live. However, there was once person who had been honest and noble, called Noah, so it was His decision to spare him and his family. Noah was told that an enormous flood was about to be poured over everyone, so he had to build an ark if he wanted to survive. He was also told that he had two bring two of every kind of animals alive, one male and one female, and to tell a story when people asked him what he was doing. In "Gilgamesh" we can find the following quote:

"Utnapishtim, son of Ubartutu, abandon your house, abandon what you possess...and build a boat instead...take with you, on the boat you build, an instance of each living thing so that they may be safe from obliteration in the flood...tell them (the other people in the village) you can no longer live in the city, because you are out of favor with Enlil."(pg. 65-67)

The similarities are pretty obvious. Both Noah and Utnapishtim were told to abandon their homes and build some sort of floating device because there was going to be a huge flood. They were also told to take animals on their boats and to tell any sort of story to those who asked questions. Seven is also a common number in the tales, Utnapishtim lasted seven days building the ark, and Noah waited seven days for the dove to return with the olive leaf in his beak. This is also part of another similarity, both characters used doves to prove if it was safe to disembark at the time. Once on the ground, both characters made sacrifices to their Gods, and both Gods swore never to inflict such a punishment on their people ever again. If you look at them really closely, they are almost the same story except for some very small differences.This leads me to the following questions: Is it possible that the stories in the Bible are all (or most of them) copied from other civilizations? Is it possible that the Catholic Religion is not an original one, just a religion that takes bits from here an there, changing some things around? Please feel free to respond to my posts with your comments.

Rocky Roads

In order to see Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh crosses a mountain that no mortal had ever crossed before. According to the book, he had some difficulties getting there: "Weeping and fearful, struggling to keep breathing...alone and companionless, seeing nothing at all...finally struggled out free into the morning air and the morning sunlight. He emerged from the mountain into a wonderful garden." (pg. 51-53). Setting the hardships apart, we can see that the garden he entered was a majestic one, because the story also mentions trees and fruits the color of every precious stone, and beyond the garden, Gilgamesh saw the sea. I make referrence to this exerpt because I think that this is one of the most common happenings around the world, a lesson that many people try to teach us every day, weather it is in a direct or undirect way. It is the lesson that teches us that if we work hard and have perseverance, the rewards will be great. It is true, because you cannot aspire to accomplish great things by being a couch potatoe, you actually have to dedicate yourself to accomplish a goal, and that is the only way in which you are going to do great things in life. As one of my favorite quotes say: "When the going gets tough get the tough going" (unkown author).

God's will

At the beginning of today's reading section, there was a part where a God was talking. This is what je said: "They (Gilgamesh and Enkidu) have killed the Bull of Heaven and killed Huwawa. One of them must die...Enkidu must die but Gilgamesh, the gifted, must not die." (pg. 37). I picked this quote to comment on because I thought that it was interesting that a God was also discriminative. It was made clear that one of the two had to go, and in my opnion, the fact that "the gifted" must not die is a way of saying that Enkidu was disposable while Gilgamesh was not. I relate this to an activity we had once in class, where we had to pretend that there had been a horrible disaster on Earth, and the only 11 survivors were stuck together in one bunker. Because lifetime would be very limited if we all stayed there with the few resources that we had, the activity consisted on the choosing of 3 characters that would survive and 8 that would not. After the presentation of each group one thing was clear: all of the characters that were either elder, handiccaped or disabled were the first to go, no questions asked. I hope that this mebtality that apparently even the Gods have will soon be gone, because it is unfair with those people that do not have the special abilities that others have.

Dreams

For these 2 tablets of Gilgamesh I want to make reference to the dreams that the main character had several times before facing the demon Huwawa. I think that this is very interesting because actually I have woken up several times preocuppied about a bad dream, but in the end the bad omens turned out to be anything but true. This also happens a lot not only in dreams but with simple bad feelings, where you see or hear something and immediately associate it with disaster, but nothing terrible happens. I hope that some of you have felt this way in some point of your life, because it is somehow exiting to see things that happen to you written in a classic such as Gilgamesh.

Strength

At the very beginning of the book, Enkidu was full of courage and strength, believing he could not be defeated. This is why he accepted the challenge against Gilgamesh, but in the end he was defeated. This is a very common happening in the lives of many, a moment where you feel completely powerfull, like if nothing can bring you down, but soon enough you learn that in fact, it can be over. Moments like these are wonderful, you feel inmensely happy, but the low moments are also part of life, so you just have to learn to be able to pick yourself up whenever there is a low point and wait for the good moments to come.

Dust in the Wind

"The life of one man is short. What he accomplishes us but the wind." (Gilgamesh, pg. 16)
I found this quote very interesting because it speaks nothing but the truth. In about 100 years, no one will remember our names, who we were, our what we did during our lifetime. It takes something pretty extrordinary to go down in history, and most of us are not up for the challenge. The quote also speaks another great truth, that our life is too short, so it´s best if we enjoy it in the best way we can. After all, all of this is just dust in the wind.

Introduction

Hello everyone!! The main purpose of this blog is to keep track of the readings that have taken place in our 9th grade Pre-Ap English course. I will be consistently posting entries about the books as my reading progresses. This blog is open to anyone who wants to learn my opinions or comments about the novels. For now, we will be reading Gilgamesh. I hope you enjoy reading my comments!!!