A Review of Gilgamesh's Characterization from the Perspective of Freud's Contention about Identity

    Freud claims that no one can love you the way you love yourself because no selfless deed exists. This belief clarifies why Gilgamesh is having so much trouble with competing for his own selfishness during the journey. He tries to love Enkidu despite the fact that his love is not genuine.  On some level, he feels obliged to try because they are not so different than each other since both have equal strength and power. Gilgamesh assumes that both can gain various benefits from each other’s unique power, so, with a little bit of contribution received from self-interest, the love arises between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. However, whilst the Gilgamesh’s characterization is given, it is emphasized that he cannot set aside his personal accomplishments in order to not jeopardize Enkidu’s life. His dead drive becomes much stronger concept than his love towards Enkidu in the battle with Humbaba. The hesitation to kill Humbaba costs him a friend. The reason why he stops to kill Humbaba is hidden in the characterization of Gilgamesh: he is so arrogant. Therefore, he might be confused with all the offerings that Humbaba comes up with. He is considering Humbaba’s offer to serve him and give him all the timber he wants (42).  At this point, the characterization of Gilgamesh clearly attributes to that he can feel satisfaction to gain complete control over someone like Humbaba. According to Freud, we constantly seek some kind of middle way in our super-ego, ego, and satisfaction those have a vital role in our psychological setting. That pause before the killing Humbaba can be denoted as a symbol of Gilgamesh’s all efforts to find the middle way among satisfaction, super-ego, and ego. Through this pause to acquire the best result among those three psychological settings, Gilgamesh psychologically considers all possible perspectives while including his profits into the account.

   Gilgamesh’s characterization also supports Freud’s contention due to creating super-ego during the civilizing progress and feeling the fear of death.According to Freud’s contention, Gilgamesh is now civilized because basically, people create super-ego during the civilization progress that makes people feel guilty about their natural instincts. People keep trying to find the balance in their psychology which puts them in a miserable occasion just like the way of how Gilgamesh feels the fear and seeks ways to be immortal. If he has not got any possessions about super-ego instead of ego, he would not believe that his days are limited. The death scene of Enkidu also restates that Gilgamesh kills his natural side, his super-ego almost fully reaches its boundaries because he finally starts to look for immortality and admits on some level that the power of nature is greater than him, which creates some kind of hollowness through Gilgamesh. Therefore, he feels the fear and tries to fill the emptiness inside him. He seeks something that makes him the best among other things to fill this hollowness, like immortality.

   After the presence of Freudian sense, the fear of authority that can readily take away all our valuable dispositions on earth is the main reason why we are resented with our lives and in this case, the authority is best explained with the parallel analogy of death. With the Freud’s contention, it is asserted that we make sacrifices with the aim of gathering up and fighting against the power of nature. Gilgamesh did that too, he became a friend of Enkidu’s just because he knew that if he had united with him, he might have accomplished his fight against nature(Humbaba). Hence, he made himself seem civilized, caring and loving for his own benefits. In the beginning of the journey, he is all about the ego and the satisfaction and throughout the journey he still partially is but the confliction between super-ego and ego makes himself feel the fear and creates a lack of self-confidence. This lack of confidence and fading of the ego spoil his life in a way that he is now unsatisfied with it. Additionally, if he does not possess anything than ego, he cannot care and show affection for people who belong to his kingdom. The Epic indicates us that he is a well-caring king although he is not at the beginning. The hint to become a good king is directly associated with his development in his super-ego. If he could not have achieved his moral side, I reckon that he would never be able to be a good, wholesome king. Since being a mighty king means taking others’ beliefs and desires into a consideration, after giving up all his instincts and adding all super-ego into his psychological settings, it can finally say that he is civilized and in the way of becoming a better king than before.

   All in all, on account of the attempt of gaining complete control over nature and progress of civilization, Gilgamesh creates super-ego which assists him to fight against all the power of nature nonetheless it is not adequate to beat it.