Personal response to “The Epic of Gilgamesh”

In order to give my personal response to “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, I discuss different attributes of the story.

My first impression of “The Epic of Gilgamesh” was that I liked the story and the way the unknown ancient author writes. The author writes concise and in forms of short verses, which I appreciate. He uses a lot of repetition in his writing style like when he repeats “Your form are not different, you are just like me”, “…Sleep like a fog already breath over him” and “At twenty leagues they broke bread, at thirty leagues they stopped for the night”. I also liked that the author uses a lot of similes and metaphors like when he compares sleep with a liquid that spills over; “No sooner had sleep spilled over me, than forthwith you touched me and made me awake!” Further, he also uses a lot of similes. One example of this is “The ocean grew calm, that had thrashed like a woman in labour, the tempest grew still, the Deluge ended.” Here, the ocean is compared to a woman that gives birth. What I liked the most about the unknown author’s writing is that he uses imageries to describe things so that I can imagine how things in the story were like. Finally, the author uses symbols like the number seven and snake which makes me think of stories from the Bible.

What I did not like so much about the story was the abrupt finish and the ancient language. I believe the reason why the author suddenly shifts to describe Gilgamesh’s hometown is that the author wants to convey to the reader that Gilgamesh realizes that he, eventually, will not live for ever. The language was sometimes hard to understand as some words were old-fashioned and unknown to me.

To sum up, I liked the story and the way it was written, but I found the ending a bit difficult to understand and some of the vocabulary ancient.