Response Journal 1: Gilgamesh

Description

The expectation is that you write about 300 words, so approximately 1 1/2 pages, double-spaced. Upload here. Write down your first reaction to the readings; do not look up on Google or any other websites if you did not understand something. Rather, what I would like you to do is “work” with the text, “work” with what you understood in the text (or not understood). Check Module “Gilgamesh” too: there is a video (Annenberg Learning Center–I think it is quite good) and a PPP. Don’t do any research at this point.

The questions listed in “Discussions” are part discussion (what we will discuss in class) and/or study questions but you also may use these as a starting point for your Response Journal–if you are at a loss on what to write. Use one or the other, or a combination. In other words, you may be quite free how you would like to structure your Response Journals. Just take them seriously and seriously engage with the literature at hand that you are writing about: read, study, think, and then write your Responses.

These are questions you can use to build upon the essay

How is Gilgamesh described in the beginning? Is this a particular “heroic” description?
What do you make of the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu? Does it strike you as a more symbolic friendship, or might it be “real”? How? Why, or why not? Use specific examples from the text to show evidence for your answer.
How does Enkidu become “civilized”? What does he loose/gain?
A story of a flood is “neither original nor unique” as our textbook phrases it (7). What, indeed, could these stories of floods signify? How do the floods in the various stories we have read so far, the Creation stories we read last week (on Canvas), Gilgames function (later when we have read Genesis, we will come back to this question).
What role(s) do women play in Gilgamesh? What function does sex have?
Would it be fair to say that Gilgamesh is based on male perspectives alone, thus depending on a patriarchal social system? Why, or why not?
Is Gilgamesh a hero? Why, or why not? (compare his description from the beginning to a description at the end).