Warning: Use of undefined constant referer - assumed 'referer' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 102

Warning: Use of undefined constant host - assumed 'host' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 105

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays:102) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 106

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays:102) in /usr/home/essaywo/public_html/essays on line 109
Gilgamesh 3 - Essay

Gilgamesh 3


Stories do not need to inform us of anything. They do inform us of things. From The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, we know something of the people who lived in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the second and third millenniums BCE. We know they celebrated a king named Gilgamesh; we know they believed in many gods; we know they were self-conscious of their own cultivation of the natural world; and we know they were literate. These things we can fix -- or establish definitely. But stories also remind us of things we cannot fix --of what it means to be human. They reflect our will to understand what we cannot understand, and reconcile us to mortality.
We read The Epic of ...

Want to read the rest of this paper?
Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay
and over 50,000 other term papers

by the fixed idea that there are just five true colors. There is an infinite continuity of shading, and breaking it down into divisions with names distracts the attention from its subtlety" . Similarly, the mind's sensitivity to the meaning of life is
impaired by fixed notions or perspectives on what it means to be human. There is an infinite continuity of meaning that can be comprehended only by seeing again, for ourselves. We read stories -- and reading is a kind of re-telling -- not to learn what is known but to know what cannot be known, for it is ongoing and we are in the
middle of it.
To see for ourselves the meaning of a story, we need, first of all, to look carefully at what happens in the story; that is, we need to look at it as if the actions and people it describes actually took place or existed. We can articulate the questions raised by a character's actions and discuss the implications of their consequences. But we
need to consider, too, how a story is put together ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays.
Write better papers. Get better grades.


Already a member? Login

writing, the narrator attempts to convince us that Gilgamesh was an actual king and that the story that follows is a true story. On the other hand, by calling our attention to the act of telling, the narrator reminds us that the truth of a story might lie in
the very fact of its being a story -- the undeniable fact of its narration. To deny its narration would be to deny our own existence. Either way, the frame blurs the distinction between Gilgamesh's world, or the world of the tale, and our own.

And yet there is an irony in the prologue of which the narrator himself seems unaware -- an irony that highlights our position as readers and not listeners. Praising Gilgamesh's ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library.
Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports,
and research papers in 2 minutes or less.


CITE THIS PAGE:

Gilgamesh 3. (2008, September 29). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Gilgamesh-3/90669
"Gilgamesh 3." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 29 Sep. 2008. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Gilgamesh-3/90669>
"Gilgamesh 3." Essayworld.com. September 29, 2008. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Gilgamesh-3/90669.
"Gilgamesh 3." Essayworld.com. September 29, 2008. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Gilgamesh-3/90669.
JOIN NOW
Join today and get instant access to this and 50,000+ other essays


PAPER DETAILS
Added: 9/29/2008 05:20:16 PM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 2968
Pages: 11

Save | Report

SHARE THIS PAPER

SAVED ESSAYS
Save and find your favorite essays easier

SIMILAR ESSAYS
» Epic Of Gilgamesh And The Bibl
» The Transformation of Gilgamesh
» A Mortals Sense Of Immortality
» The Epic of Gilgamesh
» Gilgamesh Vs Genesis
» Gilgamesh
» Skeptical Views On Noahs Ark
» Noah’s Arc, The Rip-Off
» The Old Testament Myth Or Trut
» Women In Early Lit.
Copyright | Cancel | Contact Us

Copyright © 2024 Essayworld. All rights reserved