In literature, fame and suffering often go hand in hand. Hubris is the unseen hand, the subtle lever that sets in motion events that move the hero along the path to some cathartic moment. In The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey, Gilgamesh and Odysseus are kings and great leaders of men, secure in their positions and supremely confident in their skill, strength and courage. In seeking to place themselves on par with the gods, Odysseus and Gilgamesh exhibit arrogance and a lack of reverence for those beings who can determine the course of their destinies. Through suffering and loss, both come to understand what it means to be mortal. Along the way, they learn that immortality belongs to the Gods; the personal intimacy of love and friendship are allotted to men.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Though “two-thirds god,” Gilgamesh is not immortal. As king he has fame and power but desires greater still renown. A self-serving ruler, Gilgamesh bullies his people, secure in his own glory and the power of life and death he wields over his people. Young women of his kingdom cannot enter into marriage without first submitting to the king. Gilgamesh “lets (no) girl go free to her (bridegroom)” (Atac, 199). In effect, Gilgamesh set himself as a god over his kingdom, regally ignoring the complaints of those he oppresses. But by presuming to take upon
himself the mantle of divine power, he ignores his responsibilities as king. Finally, the gods take a hand in matters. Aroused by Gilgamesh’s effrontery and the complaints of his people, the goddess Aruru creates Enkidu - in the image of the sky god Anu - to be Gilgamesh’s equal.
Enkidu becomes, in a sense, his alter ego. Gilgamesh is part god but has proven unworthy of godhead. Enkidu is created quite differently. Though he is two thirds animal, he nevertheless achieves the grace and virtue that are foreign to Gilgamesh and his overbearing and precipitate nature. “Where Gilgamesh is arrogant, Enkidu is childlike; where Gilgamesh is violent, Enkidu is peaceful; a naked herbivore among the herds” (Mitchell, 11). Though at first his rival, Gilgamesh comes to love Enkidu as a brother, presumably the very experience the gods had intended for Gilgamesh. Through Enkidu, he learns the virtues of humanity from a being created as a beast possessing neither artifice nor subtlety. In truth, Enkidu is on a divinely ordained mission to set right Gilgamesh and the wrongs of which is guilty. “It is clear that the whole world of Uruk is out of balance because of Gilgamesh’s manic excesses and…Enkidu has been created to restore that balance” (Mitchell, 22).
Enkidu ultimately pays the price for Gilgamesh’s overweening pride and ambition. Having scorned the love of the goddess Ishtar, Gilgamesh finds himself with powerful enemies. Anu, king of the gods, calls down Humbaba, the Bull of Heaven, to take revenge on Gilgamesh, but it is Enkidu who is killed. His friendship with Enkidu has made him a better man, but Gilgamesh now experiences suffering the likes of which he could never have imagined as an irresponsible tyrant. His grief over his friend’s death is profound, transformative and raw.
“My beloved friend is dead, he is dead,
My beloved brother is dead, I will mourn
As long as I breathe, I will sob for him
Like a woman who has lost her only child” (Mitchell, 44).
The pathos of the situation renders Gilgamesh’s suffering all the more poignant: Gilgamesh loves Enkidu but, as the determiner of his fate, is responsible for his friend’s death. As such, Enkidu is a “tragic hero, pulled out of his Eden into the corrupt world of humans to suffer an arbitrary death sentence from the gods…there is a certain lingering bitterness about his death. One might say that his death was caused by Gilgamesh’s monster-hunting, just as his birth was caused by Gilgamesh’s tyranny” (Mitchell, 43). It’s a bitter lesson for Gilgamesh. He has at last come to deeply and sincerely care for another only to know crushing guilt and a desperately empty sense of loss.
Gilgamesh is left alone to contemplate the meaning of mortality, unable to find solace in those superficial pursuits he once took for granted. “Alone in the desert of his heart, Gilgamesh’s sorrow turned him inward” (Schmidt, 279). He realizes that he fears death, fears the idea that fame and power will come to an end in his own mortality. Unable to reconcile himself to the idea, he determines to seek immortality. With help from Siduri the alewife, Gilgamesh crosses the waters of death and finds Utnapishtim. Here, at long last, he comes to the knowledge that has eluded him. Utnapishtim reminds Gilgamesh that only the gods hold the power of immortality; only they can decide who will live and who will die. Having failed the tests set for him by Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh returns home a mortal, but with a hard-earned understanding of his human limitations.
The Odyssey
The relationship between fame and suffering in The Odyssey is reminiscent of The Epic of Gilgamesh. Odysseus’ justly renowned cleverness and fame as a tactician leads to hubris, as it did for Gilgamesh. Governed by pride, Odysseus unwisely offends Poseidon, leading to that famous series of adventures which, in the end, teach him that men cannot aspire to be gods, that man must occupy his own place in the universe. For Gilgamesh, pride earns him little but the loss of Enkidu. For Odysseus, pride brings the enmity of Poseidon down upon him.
When Odysseus at long last returns to Ithaca, it is not his fame and reputation that aid him when it comes time to clear his house of Penelope’s suitors and win back his family. The suffering he endures throughout his travels brings him to wisdom, which proves more valuable and potent than any spear or sword.
Through his suffering, Odysseus learns that pride and renown are hollow trophies if they cannot be made to serve some good and noble end. His skill, even his personal prestige, have served him well through his struggles and encounters with death in the years since Troy but it cannot bring him home, cannot preserve the lives of the friends and countrymen he lost along the way. By the time he reaches Ithaca, he understands that suffering is an important part of human experience, without which true growth cannot take place. Having – painfully – arrived at this knowledge, Odysseus is able to employ it to serve his purpose: he must deceive even his own family, prolonging their suffering in order to restore their lives and happiness. “There seems almost a touch of sadism in the scene with Laertes…where Odysseus tells the last of the poem’s lies to his poor father, but once again Odysseus cannot afford to make Laertes’ recognition easy. The truth must be learned by suffering if it is to be appreciated, just as the return to Ithaca cost Odysseus many a heartache” (Clarke, 25).
Simply coming home is not enough. Defeating Penelope’s suitors and restoring the honor of his house are not enough. Odysseus, ever wise, must restore his world in toto. That means restoring the love and devotion of his family, for whom he has become a distant memory, still loved but distantly so, as one cherishes a long-lost relative. The searing intensity of loss becomes blunted over time, the great healer of all wounds. Odysseus’ last challenge is to triumph over the vague recesses of memory – in a sense, to return from the dead. “For Odysseus to have merely returned after 20 years would be a relief and a joy to his family, but a twenty-year absence tends to dull the edge of loss.
Odysseus is out to sharpen this edge, to intensify the shock of his return by heightening, but only temporarily, his family’s agony of privation” (Clarke, 25). Thus, in a sense, suffering helps Odysseus bridge the gap of time and return to his loved ones whole, as husband, son and king…and as a wiser man.
There is an element of cruelty in Odysseus’ use of suffering as a psychological tool. “Emotional restraint is a major characteristic of his behavior which enables him to deploy his wiles and resourcefulness to maximum effect. He does not weep for joy on seeing his son. He does not shed a tear while watching his wife cry over the memory of her absent husband. He endures the misery of his old and weak father, who mourns his lost son…” (Ahl & Roisman, 85).
It’s all meant to achieve a specific, strategic end, cold and calculating though it may seem. It is, after all, an invaluable part of who he is, a resource that is necessary to his survival. By the end of the poem, one has the sense that the ability to deceive is no longer a matter of self-satisfaction and pride, that in this, at least, he has mastered hubris. The calculating strategist whose brilliance brought down the walls of Troy no longer exults over his mastery for its own sake. His cleverness, which has earned him such renown, is at last serving a noble end – the restoration of his family’s happiness and of the world they once shared.
As Gilgamesh came to learn the nature of mortality, Odysseus learns that fame and conquest are of little use if those things for which one strives are lost, or forgotten. The Odyssey would be a very different tale if Homer had left us on the shores of Ithaca, if the poem had ended with Odysseus and Penelope in a joyful reunion embrace. There was more for Odysseus to do. He was home, but not yet home. It remained for him to apply what suffering had taught in the 20 years since his great exploits at Troy. Once he returned home, the true test of his skill and wisdom began.
Gilgamesh and Odysseus both risk their lives to seek counsel in the land of the dead (West, 403). For Gilgamesh, it leads to a failed quest for immortality. He gains, however, valuable knowledge about the limits of greatness and the boundaries mortality sets upon all men, great or insignificant. For Odysseus, fame proves to be a one-dimensional reality, a source of self-destructive pride. For both, fame is a source of loss and suffering. But the rewards for their endurance are the priceless and renewing gifts of wisdom and perspective.
Works Cited
Ahl, F., Roisman, H. The Odyssey Re-formed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 1996.
Atac, Mehmet-Ali. The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art. New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press. 2010.
Clarke, H. The Art of the Odyssey. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1967.
Mitchell, S. Gilgamesh: A New English Version. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, Inc.
2006.
Schmidt, R. Exploring Religion. New York, NY: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1988.
West, M. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press. 1997.
