To fully answer the question depends on one’s definition of strength. In a macho, ultra masculine sense in which strength is defined as one’s ability to do as one pleases and be tough, he is definitely weaker due to his friendship, but due to the fact that he no longer wants what he wanted before. Enkidu is sent to to tame Gilgamesh’s “stormy-heart.” Before he was free to do as he pleased because he had no one to oppose him, so “neither the father’s son/ nor the wife of the noble; neither the mother’s daughter/ nor the warrior’s bride was safe” whereas now Enkidu satisfies him in a way this had not, so he stops. To many, this would seem to be a lose of power, an inability to exercise his macho-man strength, but in terms of strength of heart …show more content…
To determine whether or not I believe Gilgamesh is a hero is to ask which perspective I view the story from, the perspective of a modern teenager or of a literature historian. In modern times we think of heroes as people we look up to and who deserve to be looked up to. Heroes are people like Joan of Arc, Ruth Bader Ginsburg-my personal hero-, Martin Luther King Jr., Audrey Hepburn, and Gandhi, who have “been there,done that” and become great figures who did great things for the world and humanity. These are people who are larger than life, but in good ways. They have some admirable trait for which we raise them above us. They were not always born above us, but they got there because they were intrinsically good or because they earned it. Moreover, ancient heros could be those things but weren’t necessarily. Ancient heros were cookie cutter images made from the same dough. There were necessary ingredients that had little to do with their values. Ancient heroes were, by definition mythical beings with mythical parents who go on some sort of mythical quest, typically to become a god or immortal, with divine interference, followed by a journey home. Gilgamesh fulfills all these requirements. He is described by the narrator as “two-thirds a god, one-third a man,” a proportion I’m not even going to begin to get into here, making him strong and mighty, which instantly made him heroic. He goes on multiple divine quests, from his battle with the Huwawa to his wanders after the death of Enkidu, and gods are peppered throughout it, from his mother Ninsun to the destructive Ishtar. He seeks Utnapishtim the Faraway, the only mortal to become truly immortal, to discover his secrets, fearing a death like Enkidu’s. He then returns, having learned and changed. Ancient heroes follow this mold because that’s what the people wanted to hear. They wanted to know the gods touched their lives in real and