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Module 1: Research
Post an article or You tube video that taught you something new about Gilgamesh. Be sure to explain why you chose it.
Task Three. Gilgamesh Activities.
WORLD LITERATURE I
Unit 1: Activities for Gilgamesh (TASK THREE)
Select the Activity question you wish to respond to. Make a copy of the question to begin your Activity. Post your response here to Gilgamesh Task 3. Please title your response "Gilgamesh Task 3." If you choose the Double Credit option, you must indicate that at the top of your essay and you must develop your ideas and supports substantially more fully than for a single credit Activity.
1) 0riginally, Enkidu was part animal and part man. Discuss how the harlot transformed Enkidu into a human being by first seducing him and then luring him to civilization. Develop your ideas by referring to specific incidents in the story.
2) As he lies dying, Enkidu curses the harlot, and then revokes his curse and blesses her. Do you think he was better off in his natural, animal, state, or as a civilized man? Support your opinion with specific examples from the story.
3) Underworlds are generally places of the dead, and/or of underground divinities. These places are dangerous and difficult for living persons to enter and hard to leave. Why does Gilgamesh go to the underworld, and what does he learn there? Use specific examples from the story to support your main points.
4) There are actually TWO underworlds in the story of Gilgamesh: 1) the underworld that Gilgamesh visits seeking immortality and 2) the terrible underworld of death that Enkidu sees in a vision as he is dying. Examine each underworld closely and then try to explain why you think there are two such different "underworlds" in this ancient story. Do they have different purposes? Is one only for immortals? Use plenty of specific examples from both underworlds to support your ideas.
5) Both Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, yet the gods decide that Enkidu is the one who must die. Why? Support your argument with specific examples from the story, looking closely at the differences between gods and human beings.
6) There are a number of dreams in the story of Gilgamesh. List them and then explain what roles they play in the story. Use specific examples from the story to support your ideas. Be sure to look at the way Gilgamesh's mother and Enkidu interpret Gilgamesh's dreams. How is this different from the way people interpret dreams now?
7) Compare the characters of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Who was the more heroic? Why? Begin with an explanation of what YOU consider heroic and see if it is similar to what is considered heroic in the story. Support your argument with plenty of specific examples from the story.
8) Gilgamesh and Enkidu's greatest adventures are against monstrous primary forces of nature: Humbaba and the Bull of the Sun, which are creatures of the gods. Discuss the role of monstrous creatures in Gilgamesh and pay attention to their close connections to the gods. Support your discussion with specific examples from the story.
9) Make a list of all of the female characters in Gilgamesh. Write a brief description of each and what she does in the story. Can you get any general ideas about the roles of women in ancient Sumeria from this? Explain, using specific examples from the story.
10) Review Utnapishtim's story of the flood. What does Gilgamesh learn from this story about the nature of human beings and of the gods? Do you think there is a sense of divine justice for human beings here or not? Explain using specific examples from the story to support your ideas.
11) Although Gilgamesh wants to live forever, he cannot even stay awake for seven days, as Utnapishtim proves by having his wife bake seven loaves of bread while Gilgamesh sleeps. What is the point of this episode? What does Utnapishtim teach Gilgamesh about immortality? Would anyone really want this kind of immortality? Support your answers using specific examples from the story to support your ideas.
12) When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh nearly goes mad with grief. He sits by the body until it begins to decay, he puts on the skins of animals (such as Enkidu probably once wore), and he searches the wilderness and the underworld for the secret of immortality. Do you think this is because of his love for Enkidu and his desire to bring him back, or do you think this is because Gilgamesh has finally recognized his own mortality and is terrified? Support your answer with specific examples from the text.
13) Double Credit (if thoroughly done): Read Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. This modern (1927) German novel tells the anguished story of a man (Harry Haller) who perceives himself as part educated bourgeois man and part wolf. He longs for the far away gods (embodied for him primarily in the immortal characters of Goethe and Mozart), but he can get no happiness out of daily life because of the intense conflict between his two selves. He must go on a journey through fantasy and death in order to come to understand himself and realize that there is really no conflict between his animal and human natures. Your task is to compare/contrast this novel with the story of the man/beast, the man/god, and the role of death in human life in Gilgamesh. The concepts are remarkably similar in these two stories thousands of years apart.
Unit 1: Response Paper 2: TASK 3
Unit 1: Response Paper 1:
Choose a prompt from Gilgamesh Activities (Links to an external site.) . https://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/gilgameshques.htm
Compose a five paragraph essay responding to the prompt.
Follow the guidelines below as you compose your essay:
- Your essay should be at least 250 words.
- Be as specific as you can. Support your points with details from the text. Prove that you read the book!
- Indicate at the beginning of the essay which prompt you are responding to.
- There is no requirement to include introduction and conclusion paragraphs, but you may if you wish.
Plagiarism Reminder
The essay should be in your own words. Do not copy an essay from an online source. If you use language from the texts, use quotation marks (Example: "Noah was a righteous man and blameless before the Lord.")
Module 1: Response Paper 2: TASK 6
Task 6: Module 1: Response Paper 2: Compose a 5-paragraph essay responding to the following prompt:
Compare the story of The Fall in the Hebrew Bible as told in Genesis (Links to an external site.) with the episode of how Enkidu becomes fully human (by means of the harlot) in Gilgamesh (Links to an external site.) (pages 4-6). In both stories a woman is instrumental in causing a man to become fully human, and eventually to die, the fate of human beings. Discuss the similarities and the differences between the two stories, using specific examples from both to support your ideas.
Follow these guidelines as you write:
- Your essay should be at least 250 words.
- You are not required to include an introduction and conclusion, but you may do so if you wish.
- Address at least three similarities and three differences.
- What is the moral of each story?
- Which story do you prefer?
Plagiarism Reminder
The essay should be in your own words. Do not copy from online sources. If you use language from the texts, use quotation marks (Example: "No son is left with his father, for Gilgamesh takes them all").
Task 6. Activities for Greek Drama.
TASK 6. Read through all the Greek Drama Activities listed below under the title, Task 6. Then, select one of these questions to answer for Activity 4 and upload it here.
WORLD LITERATURE I
Task Six: Activities for Greek Drama
Please read through all of these Activities before making your selection. Make a copy of the Activity question to begin your response. Upload your Activity here. These Activity entries must be thoughtful; each one should be the equivalent of at least a full typed page or more in length (e.g. not less than 250 words). They may be longer if you need to say more on your topic. You will not be able to do these Activity entries properly unless you have carefully read the assigned literature.
· The House of Atreus is one of the world's most famous dysfunctional families. Look up each of the family members, write a brief biography of each, and then explain what the family's main problems were. Support your ideas with specific examples from your reading. Bulfinch's Mythology is a good place to start.
· Consider the scene where Clytemnestra persuades Agamemnon to walk into the palace on valuable tapestries. She is treacherous; he is arrogant. He has sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia; she has taken his cousin as her lover. So who is to blame for what happens next? Do you think her killing of Agamemnon is righteous vengeance or criminal murder? Support your position with specific examples from the play.
· What could be more dangerous than going off to war while a treacherous, adulterous woman stays at home? This is the threat of Clytemnestra. No matter how successful Agamemnon might be, he could not defend himself against his wife. She is one of the most feared and loathed women in Greek literature. List some of her interesting behavior patterns and explain why they make her seem so dangerous to Agamemnon and other Greek men of the time. You might want to look for background information using Diotima, which links to materials for the study of women and gender in the ancient world
· Discuss Agamemnon's character as a king and as a husband in the play Agamemnon. Do you think he deserved to die? Why or why not? Support your comments with specific examples from the play.
· Lysistrata is about women seizing power and withholding sex in order to stop a war. However, it was written by a man during a period of history when Athenian women couldn't even go to the marketplace on their own. Do you think a woman would have written this play differently? Why? How? Be specific in your answer and use examples from the play to support your ideas.
· Medea is betrayed by her mortal husband Jason. She responds by killing his father in law and new wife AND by murdering her own children who were fathered by Jason. Why do you think Medea kills her children? Use specific examples from the play to support your points.
· Medea is a woman, a foreigner, a witch, a scary, powerful creature. Do you think Euripides was sympathetic to her strangeness, or did he use it to show what a horrid being she was? Discuss and support your comments with examples from the play.
· Oedipus the King. The fate of the infant Oedipus was predicted at birth. No matter what he did in life, he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother. Contrast this to the conditional futures that Tiresias predicts for Odysseus when he visits Hades in Book XI of the Odyssey. If Odysseus does one thing, "A" will happen, and if he does something else, then "B" will happen. Compare the fixed fate of Oedipus with the fluid fate of Odysseus. Use examples from both texts to support your points.
· Oedipus the King. Discuss the relationship of Oedipus and Jocasta in Oedipus the King. Are there any indications that she is much older than Oedipus? That she might be his mother? Should Oedipus have been concerned about who she was when he married her? Do you suspect Oedipus of practicing DENIAL? Support your comments with specific examples from the play.
· Oedipus the King and Antigone. Both Oedipus in Oedipus the King, and Creon in Antigone rule Thebes with arrogance and bad temper. Yet as rulers, they exhibit some very important differences. How are Oedipus and Creon different? Which king is the better leader? Why? Support your answer with examples from the plays.
· There are a number of excellent films of Greek Dramas, including Agamemnon, Oedipus and Medea. If you can locate one of these films, watch it and write a critical review, describing how the film interprets the drama and comparing it to the text of the play (which you, of course, have read).
· Woody Allen's film, Mighty Aphrodite, uses a Greek chorus which gradually moves from Greece to Manhattan over the course of the film. Compare his use of the Greek chorus to its use in a Greek drama that you have read. Be sure to support your ideas using specific details from both the Woody Allen film and the Greek drama.
· Both Oedipus and Job from the Hebrew Bible struggle with the question of the inscrutable nature of God's will. Although the answers are quite different, each is disturbing, because there does not seem to be much room for human understanding, action, and freedom in relation to God and/or fate. Compare/contrast these two ancient heroes who struggle with divine power and support your ideas with specific examples from both texts.
· Consider two stories where a father is asked by a god to sacrifice his child: Abraham in the Hebrew Bible and Agamemnon in Iphigenia at Aulis (by Euripides). Discuss what the two stories have in common and important ways in which they are different, using specific details from both texts.
· Make up an interesting question of your own about a Greek Drama and answer it using relevant examples from the text(s).
Task 9. Virgil's Aeneid/Indian Epic Activities.
TASK 9. Read through the Activities for Virgil's Aeneid and Virgil's Aeneid/Indian Epic Activities. Then select one of these questions to answer for this Activity, and upload here. These activities are listed below under the title, Task 9. The readings from Task 8 are linked here: the selections from the Aeneid: Book VI (http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.6.vi.html) and the selections from the Bhagavad-Gita ( http://learner.org/courses/worldlit/gita/read/ (Links to an external site.) ) or the Ramayana : CANTO CXXX.: THE CONSECRATION ( http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rama/ry501.htm (Links to an external site.) ).
After completing Task 9, go on to Unit 3.
WORLD LITERATURE I
Activities for The Aeneid, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Ramayana (Task Nine)
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/virgilgitaques.html (Links to an external site.)
(Course created by Dr. Diane Thompson, NVCC, ELI)
Please read through all of these Activities before making your selection. Make a copy of the Activity question to begin your response. . Upload your Activity here.
· Read the entire Book VI of the Aeneid. (The section in the text cuts out most of this important book.) There is a section in this Book that deals with the cycle of souls, from death to purification to rebirth. Compare this to the concept of rebirth in the Gita. What similarities do you find? What interesting differences? And, so what? Use examples from both texts to support your ideas. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Read the entire Book VI of the Aeneid and read the Gita. Aeneas discovers the purpose of his actions and destiny in this Book. Compare what he discovers to what Arjuna learns about the purpose of his actions and his destiny. (Worth double credit if very thoroughly developed and well-done. Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· In the Ramayana, Rama is presented as the ideal king and hero of Indian literature. Like Aeneas, he is descended from a god; like Aeneas, he suffers adversity and travels through the wilderness. Rama always does what he is supposed to do, promptly, cheerfully and with kindness for others. Compare/ contrast Rama's calm acceptance of adversity with Aeneas' moans and groans about the "tears of things." Which hero seems more "real" to you? Why? Develop your ideas using specific supporting examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· In the Ramayana, the forest is presented as "a place of pain," where people go into exile to live as ascetics. This forest is contrasted with the pleasures and safety of life in the city. Think back to Gilgamesh and Enkidu and the complex relationship between city and wilderness in that story. Compare/contrast these two visions of wilderness and civilization and make some interesting point about them. Use examples from both texts to support your ideas. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· In the Ramayana, Rama's wife Sita is the perfect woman. She loves and obeys her husband, follows him cheerfully into the wilderness, and never questions her role. There is no perfect woman in the Aeneid, but there are quite a few imperfect ones, both human and divine, who stir up a lot of trouble. There are also some imperfect women who make trouble in the Ramayana, including the hunchback who provokes Kaikeyi to demand Rama's exile. Compare/contrast some of the women in these two epics and come to some interesting conclusion. Support your ideas with specific examples from both epics. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· In the Ramayana, Rama insists that right action is obedience to his father. Right action for Sita, Rama's wife, is to obey her husband. Compare/contrast this clarity of knowing what is right with the fog Aeneas seems to wander in, never quite knowing what he is supposed to do, except in brief moments when a god intervenes, such as Mercury telling him to leave Dido. Support your ideas with specific examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Read the entire Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas has lost his homeland and must trudge onward to fulfill a destiny that is not of his choosing. He is somewhat consoled in the underworld (Book VI) by a vision of the future destiny of Rome and his descendents. In the Gita, Arjuna grieves because the coming battle will pit friends and relatives against one another, but Krishna teaches him that it does not matter, because every soul is eternal. Duty must be done, but with a pure, detached attitude. Compare/contrast these two very different notions of destiny and why a hero must act as he does. Support your comments with examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Read the Book of Job (71-82) online --use link to Hebrew Bible) and compare/contrast Job's vision of the unknowable God with Arjuna's vision of Krishna's totality. Do you see interesting similarities? Differences? And, so what? Use specific examples from both texts to support your ideas. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· If you are interested in reading the entire Gita (there is only an excerpt in the textbook), it is on the www at The Bhagavad-Gita. Explore the character of Arjuna and compare/contrast him in some depth to the character of Aeneas. Support your ideas with examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Consider all that Aeneas has to give up, including his wife, Creusa and his lover, Dido. Can you see similarities between the many losses that Aeneas suffers on the way to founding Rome and the Gita's doctrine of discipline? Can you see interesting differences? So what? Support your ideas with examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· The ending of the Aeneid is very bitter--Aeneas kills Turnus, his violent enemy and the poem ends abruptly. Clearly there is no hopeful future for Aeneas, although Rome is promised to his descendents. Some people have commented that Roman paganism offered no "solutions," to the problems of loss and death, which paved the way for the solutions offered by Christianity. Do you see any "solutions" for these problems in the Gita? If so, what, exactly, are they? Develop and support your ideas with examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Read the Sermon on the Mount and compare/contrast its message with that of the Gita. Each offers a "solution" to the loss and pain of human experience, but in very different ways. Develop and support your ideas with examples from both texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Aeneas (Aeneid), Rama (Ramayana), and Arjuna (Gita) all learn what their heroic duty is, and all finally accept it. However, the "duty" each learns is different in interesting ways. Compare/contrast the different kinds of duty two of these heroes learn, and support your ideas with examples from the texts. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)
· Arjuna (Gita) and Isaiah (Hebrew Bible): Encounters with God. Read Isaiah 6 and compare/contrast his vision of the unknowable God with Arjuna's vision of Krishna's totality. Do you see interesting similarities? Differences? And, so what? Use specific examples from both texts to support your ideas. (Thanks to Sandra Del Cid for this question.) If you want to expand this question to include other examples from the Hebrew Bible, you can. (Be sure to post the Activity question at the top of your essay.)