Beowulf and the Epic of Gilgamesh - Essay Example

As Natalia Breizmann points out, Beowulf’s journeys are not unlike quests in which he attempts to find his place in his society and to prove himself as the ideal hero of the Geats (1022). Beowulf’s journeys begin with his swimming match with Brecca. As a young man, Beowulf’s desire is to prove that he is braver and stronger than any other warrior in his society. As he tells Unferth, “But the truth/is simple: no man swims in the sea/As I can, no strength is a match for mine” (532-4).

As Beowulf’s adventures take him to Denmark where he battles Grendel and Grendel’s mother and finally to his last battle as King of the Geats against the fire dragon, he achieves not only fame and glory, but also the respect and the love of his people. However, eventually Beowulf, like all people, has to confront his own mortality. Consistent with the character of the true hero, even though he has a premonition that the battle with the dragon will be his last, Beowulf is determined to die in the manner in which he lived.

As he prepares to fight the dragon, Beowulf declares, “No one else could do/what I meant to, here, no man but me/Could hope to defeat this monster” (2532-4). To the end of his life, Beowulf lives his life according to the values of his society and the code of the ideal hero. Ultimately, Beowulf is a reflection of the values of his society. Life in the Dark Ages was uncertain; by necessity, people looked to their warriors to protect them from assault and invasion, and Beowulf represents the ideal warrior and king.

Unlike Beowulf, Gilgamesh is part god, and he does not begin as an ideal hero of his land. While Beowulf represented all that was good in his society, Gilgamesh was a cruel tyrant who, in the beginning, did not care about his subjects. It is only through his friendship with Enkidu and the loss of his friend that Gilgamesh begins his journey, which in many ways proves to be his salvation and demonstrates that all men can change and be redeemed. Eventually, his journey brings him to a beautiful land by the sea, where he is spiritually reborn, and where he is advised by Siduri to "Make merry day and night" (Tablet X).

Like Beowulf, Gilgamesh also finds that he must face mortality when he is denied eternal life, and like Beowulf, his journey also must end in with his death. Through his journeys, Gilgamesh also discovers how to be a good, wise, and generous king to his people, and that is probably a reflection of what the Sumerian people wanted from their rulers. In the end, he engraves his story on a stone so that his people will learn from the mysteries and secret things he saw. At the time of the earliest tellings of Beowulf, the people were pagans.

With the acceptance of Christianity, "God" provided the people of Beowulf's time with an explanation for good and evil and an afterlife for the souls of those who followed God. As later generations attempted to incorporate their Christian beliefs, the text "abounds with inserted narratives" (Breizmann 1030). When Grendel terrorizes the mead hall, the explanation is that, "He was spawned in that slime,/Conceived by a pair of those monsters born/ Of Cain" ( 104-106). This Christian theme