Odysseus Or Gilgamesh - Will The Real Epic Hero Please...

Odysseus or Gilgamesh - Will the real Epic Hero please stand up? â€Å"Gilgamesh went to the entrance into the mountain and entered the darkness alone, without a companion. By the time he reached the end of the first league the darkness was total, nothing behind or before. He made his way, companionless, to the end† (Book 9 p. 51, The Epic of Gilgamesh). In The Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem translated by N.K. Sanders, Gilgamesh is a character who is by all accounts an epic hero. As a person of nobility, he becomes tyrannical and overpowering in his strength, until the gods present him with a challenge- an equal counterpart to Gilgamesh’s fortitude. Gilgamesh battles with this new encountered foe, named Enkidu, yet because of their equivalent vitality, they end up cancelling each other out, and through a twist of events, Gilgamesh befriends Enkidu. This friendship is everlasting, through thick and thin. After Enkidu’s death and traveling in search for an answer to life’s cruelty and abandonment, Gilgamesh finds a new p erspective on life and returns home to his rightful place on the throne. The Epic of Gilgamesh entails the hardships and retribution that the main character, Gilgamesh, â…” god and â…“ human and King of Uruk, endures. Comparatively, Gilgamesh is more of an epic hero than Odysseus from The Odyssey by Homer, whose story also follows the structure of the Epic Hero Cycle. This is because Gilgamesh embarks on multiple epic journeys, and on the way, grows and learns from hisShow MoreRelatedEssay on The Odyssey21353 Words   |  86 PagesThe Odyssey Set in ancient Greece, The Odyssey is about the hero Odysseus long-awaited return from the Trojan War to his homeland, Ithaca, after ten years of wandering. The current action of The Odyssey occupies the last six weeks of the ten years, and the narrative includes many places - Olympus, Ithaca, Pylos, Pherae, Sparta, Ogygia, and Scheria. In Books 9-12, Odysseus narrates the story of his travels in the years after the fall of Troy, and this narrative includes other far-flung