Response to Gilgamesh tablet 7 & 8

This is a short summery of the story until tablet 7&8.



Death is something that lives near you, something part of you. But a thing you don’t want to usually see or admit. In tablet 7 and 8, death has finally arrived as a depressing loss. Before that two important characters have died; Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven. But both of them were representing the power and victory of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

By showing Gilgamesh weeping as shown in page 44, “‘It is Enkidu, the companion, whom I weep for, weeping for him as if I were a woman.”, (Gilgamesh) the author shows that Gilgamesh is a human, even if he is half god. Depicting the weakness of “the strongest of all” is an important strategy to make the superhero character familiar to the readers. Winning a person’s sympathy helps readers feel closer with the character. This existence of half god but also half human may motivate audiences to be either strong like Gilgamesh or Enkidu or believe in their leaders that are “strong with storm heart” just like Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Which would have been an important factor in the era when the tablets were written down.