Journal 2 -- The format of Gilgamesh

As good as the story of Gilgamesh has been so far, there was a lot of stuff left out of the version that is in the text book we have, and it can get somewhat annoying. A few lines being missing isn’t that bad, but not knowing what happened in the 40 passages missing or the entire last part of the biggest fight scene of the story so far just completely not being mentioned kind of bothers me. I’m sure the translator could have guessed what the originator was trying to say, and if he or she couldn’t then I would have much rather him or her just make up something real tight. Nobody really knows where this stuff came from anyway so it could all be made up. The one good thing I can definitely point out about them losing pieces of the story is it is a heck of a lot shorter. Imagine if all of those lost passages were put into our version….. It would take us twice as long to finish!!! (and I don’t like super long stories). Also, another negative I found with the structure of Gilgamesh is it can get aggravating reading the same lines over and over and over. There are many sections of Gilgamesh that are repeatedly repeated and the repetition wares out the reader. I know it is suppose to emphasize the thoughts or actions, but the author or maybe the translator reiterates himself more than needed in the story. It’s like come on, we get it by now Gilgamesh is going to wake up and ask Enkidu why did he wake up so urgent, was he touched, did a god walk by or about his muscles trembling and bla bla bla we got it the first five times. I think if they wanted to put some extra stuff in the story they could have just filled in the original content where it was suppose to be. Not only could it get more intense and interesting, but then it wouldn’t be so stretched out, but more full. Since Gilgamesh is as old as dirt, literally, I can’t blame it for its flaws, besides there could be a lot more wrong with it. The bible is just as old and it is so much harder to read and understand. So I’m thankful for the way Gilgamesh was presented as whole and that’s just my views of the way the story is being presented to us. Many other people would probably rather it not have more made up parts because it wouldn’t be original, but me, I don’t care about that as much I want to read exciting things. As far as the plot of the story goes, it is already very fascinating so I can’t talk too bad about the negative sides without going into depth on the positive sides of Gilgamesh as an epic. The positive feedback outweighs the down sides in my eyes because no story is going to be perfect to anyone. So to please a reader such as me (a non-reader) as much as it did made it successful piece of work.