English 231: World Literature

August 31, 2010
Today's discussion was quite interesting. Although I have read the text, it was quite insightful to have open discussion about what were actually reading. Mr. Bahlmann asked us what we wanted to talk about. At first, I blanked out and I thought he was just trying to make conversation with the class, when I realized it was about 1:05pm, so class was in session. He asked what we liked or didn't like about Gilgamesh, so far. Thankfully, my fellow classmates saved me and spurted their answers out loud. They didn't like the ellipses, the repetition of the dreams and the specific language used. I knew Gilgamesh was written a long time ago, but when someone referenced the "Show him your sex" phrase, I thought that was irrelevant. Then again, there isn't a wrong answer, right? The quote referenced towards older language found in the biblical pages of the Old Testament. It seemed a bit childish for the class to laugh at this phrase. It wasn’t anything to provocative or something.




Something quite startling was the concept of how the “nobles” thought it was “noble” for Gilgamesh to bless a man’s wife by simply taking her to bed the first night of their wedding. I felt disgusted, but then again, this happens with Asian families prearranging marriages for their son or daughter. If I were put in that position, I would feel filthy and kill myself. The class laughed at Mr. Bahlmann’s remarks about the great ol’ mighty Gilgamesh saving the marriage of an ordinary man and woman, by simply screwing around with everyone’s wife. Nowadays, Gilgamesh represents a prime example of an immoral man. Thankfully, the trusty man, Enkidu, will come to the rescue.



How was Enkidu created? I don’t think it was answered during class. I mean besides the story telling us he was created from clay and thrown into the woods. Is he supposed to be some mystical creature that developed to counter balance the greatness of Gilgamesh? I have no idea. But let’s not get into different tangents here. So an animal trapper from the city spots Enkidu in the woods, freeing his critters which upset him so much, that the trapper goes to the king. The king then tells the trapper to bring a woman to him and “show her sex.” How was this supposed to affect Enkidu? Besides give him six glorious days and seven nights to bump and grind this prostitute. The discussion lead to how the animals saw Enkidu differently as a civilized person. Yet, when I think of sex, I think individuals act wild and crazy like that one song… “You and me baby are nothing like mammals’, so let’s do it, like they do it, on the discovery channel.” I question Enkidu’s possibility to actually withstand six whole days sexing up with that one prostitute may serve him to be supernatural. He was in the wild for so long with no companion, so I imagine a man would go crazy for seeing a beautiful (cough cough) woman throwing herself to him. Think about it through the woman’s perspective, how it would have varied in diction and expression. The passage seems to demean women for being just sex symbols and nothing more.

Word Count: 540