More Like a Human

While I read Tablet VIII, I started to think about friendship. When Gilgamesh cried due to his friend Endiku's death, I realized that he took it very hard. When I started reading Gilgamesh, I thought he was a ver self-centered person who didn't care about anthing but himself. But when I read this Tablet, I noticed that even though he had a high eego and lots of power, he was a caring person. Gilgamesh cared a lot about his friend, and he was going to do what he could in order for him to be rembered: "You wore the garments suitable for a prince. You sat in the place of honor nearest the king. The great ones of the the earth bowed down before you. Gilgamesh was your friend and you companion. Gilgamesh the king has built a statue to celebrate the fame of Endiku. The grief of Gilgamesh for you has been the cause of woe and wailing in the city. Now you are gone, and Gilgamesh will wear ther skins of beasts and wander hairy-bodied grieving in the wilderness for you. "- pg. 47 When I read this, it was when I started to consider Gilgamesh a better person.
As I read Tablet IX, I thought of Gilgamesh as a kind of coward. When he decided that he didn't wanted to die like his friend Enkidu, he went to seek for the son of Urbatutu, Utnapishtim, the only men who knew how death could be avoided. I thought of him as someone who doesn't accept his destiny as it is, but he wants to be powerful and be great forever. When he said: " 'Enkidu has died. Must I die too? Must Gilgamesh be like that?' Gilgamesh felt the fear of it in his belly."-pg. 48. I felit when I read this that he was someone who felt superior to everyone and thought that he could decide what was going to happen to him.
But, as I kept reading Tablet IX, I saw that he wasn't much of a coward. He was a coward in the way that he wanted to avoid his destiny, but he was brave in the way, that he'll don anything to avoid death. There was something Gilgamesh said that kind of impacted me: "This is the way Gilgamesh must go, weeping and fearful, struggling to keep breathing, whether in heat or cold, companionless. Open the gate to the entrance into the mountain. "pg. 51. By reading these, I began to see Gilgamesh more like a human. Because humans are cowards, but they are brave whenever they have to do something in order to prevent the thing they were cowards about. This got me thinking: Is Gilgamesh really more god than a human? Or a human more than a god?