1. Home

Why the Epic of Gilgamesh is a Profound Meditation on Love and Grief

In this essay on the Epic of Gilgamesh, the student argues that the story's most important element is not the individualized hero narrative often associated with Gilgamesh's journey but rather the story of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The student writes that this becomes clear in the story's main themes of life, death, fate, and change.
PAGES
3
WORDS
809
  Cite
View Full Essay
About this essay
This essay received a B by one of Kibin's paper graders. Click here to see what was done well and what needs improvement.

More essays like this:

enkidu, epic story
Not sure what I'd do without @Kibin
- Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University
Exactly what I needed.
- Jenna Kraig, student @ UCLA
Wow. Most helpful essay resource ever!
- Chris Stochs, student @ UC Berkeley
Generating Preview...
This essay received a B by one of Kibin's paper graders. Click here to see what was done well and what needs improvement.

More essays like this:

enkidu, epic story
Not sure what I'd do without @Kibin
- Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University
Exactly what I needed.
- Jenna Kraig, student @ UCLA
Wow. Most helpful essay resource ever!
- Chris Stochs, student @ UC Berkeley

View other essays like this one:

Bridget's feedback:

"You've written a lyrical and sensitive exploration of Gilgamesh's story that takes a "show don't tell" approach to demonstrating the emotional value of the story. I do find the purpose of the essay a little hard to pin down in that regard, so the grade and comments should be read with this in mind. If this is meant to be a thesis-driven analytical essay, your next steps should work to shift into that mode: this may entail rethinking organization, with body paragraphs structured according to main claims rather than following the story beat-by-beat; reducing description of plot details and event in favor of textual evidence paired directly with analytical claims; and an explicit thesis, perhaps oriented around your concluding argument that the real worth of the story is not the hero narrative but the friendship narrative. Action from the story should also be recounted in the present tense in this mode.

If your prompt allows this more essayistic reader-response engagement with the story, there are still a few comments that apply to moving forward in whatever form this project will take. A number of sentence fragments and similar sentence boundary issues trouble the reading experience; while some might be chalked up to the lyrical style, avoid overuse--indeed, I would recommend not using them at all, as you are still in a formal mode where demonstrated control will be part of ethos. Watch out, as well, for overly stylized diction that results in imprecision or murkiness of meaning: you still want to target reader comprehension and information delivery within the more lyrical mode."

Learn more about this feedback