Individuals and Society in the Epic of Gilgamesh
In the epic, there are mainly focus on love, mortality which is looked for, friendship and civilization, and the getting loss of innocence in society. The epic starts by introducing us to Gılgamış and the way he is got excluded from society because of the powers he has because, at the beginning of the poem, he is introduced as a cruel ruler. He is wild at his decisions even if he has a unique physical appearance and traits, so the Gods decide to create the same version of himself (Enkidu) to control Gılgamış in a way. Enkidu was grown up in the wild nature with animals. When he learned the existence of Gilgamesh and his barbaric, strict ruling style, he decides to face him. While fighting, they gain respect for each other, and they got close friends. These friends went on an adventure and in this adventure, they beat every monster they met. Then, God decides to kill one of them as a punishment, and Enkidu dies. After that, Gılgamış sets out to find immortality with the motivation of their friendship. Even if, his journey ended up with failures, it was not nothing because actually, the epic tells us the two men who are faced with their own mortality against that of human society because they lived in their own ways.
In this epic, we see that these two men have raised as individual members of society until they found each other. So, they were far from society, and the way that Gılgamış got excluded because of his personal desires and authoritarian behaviors and I think even if he was harmless, the society wanted to see him in that way. At the same time, along with their similarities, Enkidu was also excluded from society and had to face society’s unwarranted prejudices. They started their journey as an alone person and never really found a place for themselves in society and had to again be apart from society, just because they are not someone from society because everyone should be the same with another but in some time, they were together and a face of society in an unusual way. Because of the decision that the Gods made, Gılgamış has stuck again and could not find a space in society. He wanted to find immortality for his friend just because taking him back, he fought alone with mortality and against society again, just to bring him back. Also in a manner, while trying to find the solution to morality, he was helping society to save his friend’s life.
As a result, we see examples of individual members of society who have lived far away from society and had to face the difficulties of this and the motivation of the power of doing something different for someone else in the society as a person who lived alone in a way.
