According to Merriam-Webster, art is “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also: works so produced.” According to this definition, forgery is, arguably, art — especially Wolfgang’s. I’m one of those people who has a super loose definition of art (one of my favorite pieces of art is just a pile of candy, actually. More specifically, “Untitled” [Portrait of Ross in L.A.]). If forgery isn’t art — a position I originally took — then what about pieces inspired by other artists? The main thing that makes forgery not considered art isn’t the piece of art itself, but the fact that it’s sold under false pretenses. Wolfgang’s art would’ve been a very interesting idea if he sold them under his own name, being original works in the style of famous artists. The only thing that makes his art unethical is how he sold it, not the artwork itself. This is true for all forgery, really. It’s not uncommon for people to practice art techniques (like line weight) by recreating already existing works, working on their art skills in the process. The only thing that makes this unethical is selling it as if someone else painted it.

Art, however, is made up of more than just what you see on the page/canvas/stage/etc. It started with an idea or a prompt, then there’s a creative process in making it, and there’s a lot of effort and thought and creativity put into it until it’s “done” (many poets and painters insist that art is never finished, so “done” goes in quotes). All of this is vital to art. However, the start of a forgery’s creative process is a bit different than an original work’s, seeing as you have a pretty clear starting point. However, if that set starting point disqualifies forgery from being art, then what about times in art classes where you’re assigned to make something based on another artist’s work to study their technique and explore different styles (something that happened often in my elementary school art classes, and occasionally in my writing classes at ECA)? Are the creations from those assignments not art? What about, as I referenced earlier, people who redraw already existing works to practice techniques they’re having trouble with? Are those creations not art? Those things, to me, are art. Would it be ethical to publish those works without saying I made them and creating what they’re inspired by? No, but a possibly about how I’d publish something isn’t what makes it art.

Many authors, when writing, consider their audience along with their subject matter. Stories for 4, 14, and 40 year olds are vastly different. Stories also changed based on where they’re being written, and the political climate the author is living in. All these things and more also affect visual art and its value. The price a painting is sold at, however, has very little to do with art and a lot to do with rich people. A lot of famous paintings are either owned by museums or the richest people on Earth. Museums care more about art that’s famous because they’re trying to preserve history rather than appreciate art, for the same reason that science museums want to know if fossils are real, and make sure they’re scientifically accurate. Rich people care about art from famous painters because of the prestige owning one of their art works holds, not because they like the art (do you think Elon Musk has an appreciation for art? Kim Kardashian? Mark Zuckerberg?). For artists, there is value in who made something (seeing a Friday Kahlo painting in real life would be very cool), but we place more value in the substance of the art because we’re generally more knowledgeable about it. Overall, the value of art is determined by who is looking it, and how much they know about it (and of they care).

While deceptive intent can seem like it ruins art, I’ve read poetry by 13 year olds straight out of middle school who are trying to out-angst or out-humor each other. If intent mattered THAT much, art high schools would not exist. And honestly, there are plenty of artists who have done a lot of bad things, some of which have made it into their art. If we’re judging art based on how good its intent is, there’s a lot more we have to disqualify than forgery.

The back of my copy of The Epic of Gilgamesh from this class starts with, “I am Gilgamesh who seized and killed the Bull of Heaven, I killed the watchman of the cedar forest, I overthrew Humbaba who lived in the forest.” This is, obviously, a list of Gilgamesh’s accomplishments. However, knowing how his story ends, this list is reframed. It originally sounded like a summary of who Gilgamesh was and what he was most proud of, but that’s only part of it. This is a list of Gilgamesh’s accomplishments before he ventured off from Uruk, the city he ruled, to be rid of his innocence. In many ways, The Epic of Gilgamesh, along with the Book of Genesis, Oedipus Rex, and Lone Star, are stories about knowledge and its benefits (and consequences).

As I discussed before, Gilgamesh starts the story off pretty ignorant. He’s a terrible king, disregarding his subjects, except for when he wants to sleep with them or needs their free labor (how delightful). He’s not particularly intelligent, either. He just does stuff with no thought of its consequences, and only knows how to solve disagreements with his fists. Yet again, how delightful. However, after forming a very strong bond with his favorite gal pal Enkidu, Enkidu dies. This is tragic, and the death hits Gilgamesh pretty hard. This death hits him so hard that he decides he needs to never die, and goes on a journey to find the secret to immortality. Spoiler alert: he does not find the secret he was looking for. However, he learns throughout his journey that his idea was at least a little dumb, but immortality wasn’t totally off the table. When Gilgamesh returns home to Uruk, he dedicates the rest of his life to becoming a better king and and becoming “immortal” by writing down his story (the story we just read) in the hopes that future generations can read it and learn from his mistakes, and his journey to fix them. Gilgamesh only becomes a good king when he learns what it means to be a good king, and what it really means to be immortal. The story’s final chapter reads, “Men will say, ‘Who has ever ruled with might and with power like him?’ As in the dark month the month of shadows, so without him there is no light. O Gilgamesh, this was the meaning of your dream. You were given the kingship, such was your destiny, everlasting life was not your destiny. Because of this do not be sad at heart, do not be grieved or oppressed; he has given you the power to bind and to loose, to be the darkness and the light of mankind” (118).

The gaining of knowledge in the Book of Genesis feels more obvious than in Gilgamesh, mainly because it’s spelled out pretty clearly by almost everyone in the story. When the serpent is trying to convince Eve to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, he tells her, “…you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad” (Genesis 3:5). Later, when God is confronting Adam and Eve about what they’ve done, He says, “See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad!” (Genesis 3:22). While this can seem negative at first (mainly because God says it’s bad and we’re kind of supposed to be rooting for God), it’s more nuanced than that. Even though they had to leave paradise, Adam and Eve being driven into the “real world” got us to where we are today (which is arguably good), and gave us the knowledge of morality to make our own decisions as people and not be confined to doing what can be assumed to be a pretty limited amount of activities in Eden. After Adam and Eve were forced to leave, there was suffering (like with Cain and Abel), but there was also informed decisions and creativity and more complex ideas/societies, all of which require knowledge. This is, of course, a double edged sword, since there’s still suffering today that wouldn’t have happened in the Garden of Eden, but like we discussed in class, Adam and Eve were given a choice of eating or not eating the fruit, knowing they’d most likely eat the fruit. This story isn’t a downfall as much as it is a backstory for our current society — none of which could’ve happened with Adam and Eve’s original ignorance.

The knowledge that’s gained in Oedipus Rex and in Lone Star is alike because they both require you to turn off/close it and take a second. As Oedipus puts it, “I, Oedipus, / Oedipus, damned in his birth, in his marriage damned, / Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand!” (64). After learning of a prophecy that told Oedipus he was destined to marry his mother and kill his father, he ventured from Corinth to Thebes to ensure that wouldn’t happen. However, he finds out that his parents in Corinth had adopted him, and the Queen and late King of Thebes (whom he married and killed, respectively), were his birth parents. That was, obviously, not what he wanted to hear, and he was devastated over this news. This led him to gauge his own eyes out and be banished by the new King of Thebes. In Lone Star, police officer Buddy Wade finds out that his (immoral and kind of ugly) father didn’t want him to date his high school crush, Pilar, just because of racism. It was racism and the fact that they were half siblings, which they only find out after getting back together as adults. This parallels Oedipus Rex for obvious reasons, but beyond that, Lone Star parallels Oedipus Rex because the protagonists of both are trying to uncover answers that, according to that one guy in the fishing boat, were probably best left unknown. However, these stories, like Genesis, aren’t anti-knowledge, despite how they seem initially. These stories aren’t as pro-knowledge as they are anti-ignorance: in Oedipus’ case, the whole story was caused by him not knowing that he was adopted/who his birth parents were, and in Lone Star, a lot of the plot could’ve been avoided if he knew why his dad didn’t want him near Pilar, and that his dad was dead and not just gone. Their ignorance was their downfall.

All four of these stories show how, even though knowledge can have consequences and seem detrimental at first, ignorance causes more issues. Knowledge creates better people, and more importantly, a better society.

While I believe that good deeds should be rewarded, this generally doesn’t happen. Good deeds should be rewarded to encourage people to do more of them (people are more likely to go out and do good if the receive good in return), in turn making the world better overall and creating a happier, more productive society. However, I don’t think that bad deeds should be punished – at least, not as often as they are right now. I believe that a large reason people do bad things is for the attention it gives them. A lot of the ways we punish people – ie. plastering criminals’ faces all over news sites -just gives them more attention/publicity. Also, I think that rewarding good deeds is a much more effective tactic to create a better society than punishing bad deeds. Rewards incentivize people to do the correct thing, and while we don’t have a lot to go off of for what that would look like implemented in our society, we see punishment for bad deeds a lot. From our legal system to clip charts in elementary school classrooms, punishments aren’t hard to find, and honestly, I rarely see them doing their job. Kids in classrooms still misbehaved. People have still committed a lot of crimes. Children have disregarded what their parents told them. People break rules at their job despite the risk of getting fired. I’m not saying that reward systems would completely eliminate these issues (classrooms with little prize boxes don’t have perfect children in them), but positive things to look forward to tend to create positive (good!) environments well.

I don’t really justify my own good fortune, honestly. Is some of it from hard work? Yeah, I’ve gotten good grades (and the positive consequences of them) from studying hard, but even those situations are partially because of luck. I don’t have the time of day to look over every single worksheet/packet I’ve done in a given unit, so I look over as many as I can and hope that the problems I had to skip aren’t on the test. Most of the time, this works out. Does that mean that I’m just more deserving of a good grade? Does that mean that I studied more and am a lot smarter than people who scored lower than me? No, obviously not. A lot of my good grades in math are from me studying and paying attention in class, yes, but I’m also a pretty mathematical person in general. I think about a lot of things in numbers and patterns because they make sense to me that way, which makes math class an easy A lot of the time. This “good fortune,” like a lot of good things that happen to people, is really just good luck with a bit of extra effort.

Humans ought to act ethically because we have a responsibility to the people around us, and our civilization at large. If everyone had the mindset of not doing good until they’re rewarded for it, there would be no good people to give those rewards. A good society is created by a lot of people who saw some good in the world and decided there’s something to that.It’s important for society to be good in general because a good society also implies that it’s safe and friendly, allowing more people to survive and make the most out of their environments. This creates a society that has more people in it, that’s more productive, and that creates more good as it goes on.

Within the story, God punished Job to prove that his belief in God wasn’t shallow like the satan thought it was. The satan believes that Job only believed in God because he had everything, and was therefore living a life that would make people want there to be a God (with the mentality of “I’m well off because it’s a reward for how I’ve lived my life”). When God punished Job and Job ended up still believing in God, it reaffirmed that Job’s belief in god was about more than how he was rewarded for his life choices. It proved that Job’s belief in God might’ve started a bit shallow, but ended up giving him a more complicated view of how the world works and why people are granted better lives than others.

The poem “Eden is that Old-Fashioned House” by Emily Dickinson relates to Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden because, first of all, them leaving Eden is one half of the poem’s metaphor. Secondly, and more importantly, the poem describes leaving the only place you’ve known as home without the knowledge of what leaving will be like. The poem describes leaving your childhood home, saying, “We dwell in every day/Without suspecting our abode/Until we drive away./How fair on looking back…” (2-5). While Adam and Eve aren’t technically children when they’re created, they were a lot like children: they were working on limited life experience and hadn’t lost any of their innocence yet. When they left Eden, they left the place they had called home their entire (short) lives with no idea what the outside world will be like. They weren’t being taken care of and they weren’t as safe anymore; they had to protect and fend for themselves from that point on. This parallels the situation described in the poem: leaving the safety of where you grew up to go explore the world and defend yourself from it.

As I said before, both situations (leaving Eden and your childhood home) require leaving safety to enter the dangers of, well, everything else. My life as a high school senior parallels that because, even though I know what life is outside of my home to an extent and the people around me are preparing me for it, I have no clue what it’ll fully be like or how I’ll react to it. Will I make the life for myself and live for a couple hundred years? Probably not for that second part, but I can only hope for the first. I could miserably fail, or not be prepared for what I find at all. There’s no way to know until it happens. My situation also parallels the poem because, like Dickinson says in lines 3-4, I don’t know what/how much will change or what I’ll miss about my current home until I leave. There might be not a lot to miss – Orange might be super boring compared to wherever I go to college – or maybe I’ll miss every last detail. I imagine it’ll be somewhere in the middle. There’s no way I won’t miss my pets, but I doubt I’ll miss the Olive Garden I’ve only gone to twice. Becoming an adult and moving out/going to college relates to the poem because it describes leaving the comfort you grew up with, not knowing what you’re giving up until you’ve been gone.

There’s an endless list of things I’m scared will change once I leave home. The main is something happening to my pets – the oldest one, Bella, is 11, and the two others (Tiana and Ghost) are 9 and 4, respectively. Ghost is pretty young, but Tiana and Bella are old ladies. I’m worried something will happen to one of them while I’m away. Also, I’m scared that I’ll stop talking to all of my current friends. I don’t expect to stay in touch with, let alone stay close to, all of my current friends. But to lose all my friends while I’m adjusting to my life in a completely new state? That idea is terrifying to me. I’d obviously still have a lot of my family to talk to, but besides my brother and a few cousins, I don’t have much family that’s my age. I love all my family, but even with them all, that would be isolating. On top of that, I’m afraid that I’ll lose… something that I don’t know how to word properly? Not quite my sense of self, but I’m scared I’ll quit playing the violin, crocheting, writing, reading, and never pick up new hobbies, or pick up new hobbies for conformity’s sake. I’m afraid I’ll change who I am and what I do for the worse. Even though I’m looking forward to experiencing new things and seeing what in my life changes for the better, no matter where I end up, I fear how my life could go wrong.

While I found it pretty easy to find what to write about for other blog prompts, I was stumped for this one. I guess all the adults in my life only say mediocre stuff (or I’m not remembering smart things they’ve said, who knows). Anyway, I have a solution, so bare (bear?) with me.

I was an absolute nerd for most of my life. I still am. While most of my classmates since I started school have considered this a mortal sin (except when they were paired with me for group projects), I spend my time reaping the benefits of this. One big benefit of being a super smart super loser is books! I’ve read a lot of them. These books were all written by people, mostly adults, and I’ve learned a lot from them over the years. However, the first time I felt like I truly gained something from a book when when I read The Iliad.

While there isn’t much direct advice I could take from it (I’m not being sent off to war anytime soon, I think), that’s not really the point of The Iliad (or most poems). Most people reading it weren’t in the same situation as Achilles, but the point of the epic is to not be like the characters of the book. Depending on the translation, the book could open describing Achilles a couple ways, but the important part is that he’s known for his anger/wrath. The book takes place over the course of only a few battles within the decade-long Trojan War. At first, this feels like a strange place for an epic to take place (why not have it describe, you know, the actual war the characters are fighting?), by the time you get to the end, you see the development of Achilles as a character.

He started out angry and childish, sulking over having his “bride prize” (ew) taken away from him, but towards the end, he agrees to give an enemy’s body back to Troy and pause the war for a bit so he could have a proper funeral. He also stops sulking and starts to fight again, allowing the Greeks to ultimately win the war. The lesson of The Iliad (probably along with a couple others) is to move past your own anger/selfishness to ensure the greater good.

I wouldn’t say I’m a particularly angry person, but, like everyone else, I’m imperfect. I don’t think, What would a Greek hero do? when faced with an issue (please never do that), but reading The Iliad showed me how severe consequences for your actions can be. Even if I do it subconsciously now, I’m more inclined to think through my actions, especially when emotions are high.

I think the message of The Iliad has stuck with me so well because it didn’t come from someone sitting in front of me. The lessons I learned from that book, like everyone other one, were things I had to willingly sit down to read, then think through ana analyze afterwards. The epic didn’t come up in passing during a car ride or over a meal. It was one of the most important pieces of literature to an ancient civilization, and its morals are pretty simple if you boil the story down. They’re also universal enough to apply so so many people and so many situations today, no matter how different the person is from Achilles.

Now, as I write this on the floor of my room, I’m sitting next to a stack of books I’ve acquired throughout middle and high school. Many of their pages are pretty blank, probably because I haven’t read those yet, but a lot of my books are filled with post-its or annotations in the margins. Would I have started paying that close attention to books without reading The Iliad? Yeah, probably. But I did read The Iliad, so now those books (and my brain) sit filled with observations, criticisms, comparisons, and speculations. Not to get cheesy or whatever here, but even though the actual moral of the the Iliad has nothing to do with reading, the advice I took from Homer’s work was to pay closer attention to what writers do and why – lessons from old, grade A nerd stories can move into the 21st century.

What are five things I want to do/possess within my lifetime? Firstly, I want to drive a Subaru Outback (which I already do everyday! So that’s good, I guess). This one is kind of silly/surface level, but honestly, that’s fine. Not everything I do in my life has several layers of deep, thought-provoking meaning. I’m here to have fun, and driving my stereotypically-sapphic-girl car to get froyo is very fun. Driving a Subaru Outback isn’t particularly important to humanity, but having fun is. In a society where we’re all hyper-focused on productivity and being the best and beating everyone else, it’s good to take a step back and have mindless fun sometimes (or mindful fun, if that suits you better). Humans need some sort of unseriousness to keep going – work 24/7 isn’t healthy. The fun of driving around in the car is the important part.

My second goal is to get a PhD. This is probably less fun than the Subaru Outback, but I like school (sometimes. For certain subjects) and a lot of jobs in the field I want to go into require grad school, so I might as well become a doctor while I’m at it. This is more of a resume virtue than a eulogy one, and I value non-academic goals an equal amount to this one, but it’s still up there. Specifically getting a PhD isn’t super important (honestly, even undergrad isn’t as important as most people say it is. It’s definitely not important enough to pay $300K+ for four years of school if it’s not required for the field you’re going into). However, being educated is important to humanity. There’s a reason that some governments try to restrict education – they know it’s important and a smarter society can better identify sketchy political activity. A PhD is one of the highest degrees a person can get, so it’s hard to be more educated than that.

The third thing I want to do in my life is to read 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez entirely in the original Spanish. I’m by no means fluent in Spanish, but I can speak it conversationally, and reaching this goal is a good way to motivate me to become fluent in the language (it’s not really a book you can understand otherwise. I can barely read it translated into English). reading it in Spanish will also allow me to appreciate one of my favorite authors’ work in a new way. Reading 100 Years of Solitude can educate people on Columbian history, therefore adding to people’s cultural awareness. Also, reading creates more empathy in society, and boy do we need more of that. Even if it’s not 100 Years of Solitude (though I definitely recommend reading stuff by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – he’s written novels and short stories. His work has something for everyone, give something of his a try), reading helps humanity work towards a better future.

The fourth item of my bucket list is to visit every continent (minus Antarctica. I know people go there via cruise, but being on a boat for 30 minutes in a lake nearly kills me. Several weeks at sea going through the terrible waters surrounding Antarctica? No thanks. Call me when the build an airport there, then it’s a maybe). I haven’t been out of the US yet, but I love travelling within the country, and I want to broaden my horizons (the US is only interesting for so long). Plus, I’d like to visit some of my family that lives internationally where they live instead of them coming here. Travelling helps people gain more empathy and gain more knowledge on different cultures. Does everyone need to go to every single continent? No. But is there value in experiencing other cultures first-hand? Yeah. Cultural consciousness is lacking in humanity right now, so it’s not hard to assume that a lot of people could benefit from travelling a bit more.

My last life goal is to get a tattoo. Is my mom happy with this one? Definitely not. Am I okay with that? Yeah (sorry mom). I’ve gotten 9 piercings total (6 have survived to today), so a tattoo just feels like the next step. Also, I enjoy getting piercings as a form of self expression, and tattoos are generally more customizable than piercings. I have some tattoos planned out, and they’re all pretty personal/thought through. One is probably going to be a matching tattoo with my dad, and another is a reference to my favorite book series from when I was a kid (it’s no longer my favorite, since I’m no longer 8 years old, but the book series that made me like reading will always be important to me). Tattoos specifically aren’t important to humanity, but self expression is. Uniformity isn’t usually a good idea (neither is total individuality, though). Being able to express yourself as an individual can lead to the formulation of community with people who are similar to you, and community is the backbone for a lot of humanity’s history. Also, tattoos can be fun, and as I’ve said earlier, being boring isn’t good for humanity as a whole.

I want to be remembered for a lot of things (perhaps for my super cool Subaru Outback), but one quality of mine that I’d like people to remember is how much I like my friends. If something exciting happens in my life, my friends find out the same day – from a pretty sunset to buying a new book to getting a good grade on a test, I always tell at least one of my friends about it. While I’m too busy to see all my friends regularly (sorry Lara!), I try to see them when I can. They’re important to me because, to quote Mr. Bourdeau, “Strong interpersonal relationships are the #1 factor in a person’s happiness.” I have friends the same reason most people have friends: so I’m not lonely. I love talking to my friends. They keep me sane. Like I just said, this is true of most people. Humanity needs community, and friends are one of the best ways to create that. Friends (along with family and significant others) keep people from being lonely. They also give people different perspectives, since most people are pretty different. Knowing different people from different walks of life can expand people’s worldview.

The purpose of life, technically, is just biological. The point of organisms living on this Earth is to reproduce and continue their respective species. However, each life is given a purpose by the person (or other species) living it. A life’s purpose is made up as a bunch of things: goals, relationships, impact on others, random little things people do. From my Subaru Outback to my hope of getting a PhD and everything in between all define who I am as a person, and why I’m living my life.

When Utnapishtim says this, he follows it by saying, “Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time?” (106-107). The answers to these questions are, obviously, no. Houses aren’t built to stay up forever, they’re built to shelter you for the brief time you’re there – any time afterwards is good, but that wasn’t your intent when building it. Contracts aren’t signed in the assumption that they must be followed for millennia, they’re signed to follow until their time period ends, or the parties involved die. After that, they’re practically meaningless (unless they survive to be studied by historians later, but that’s not usually the original intent). The same thing can be said for life: people aren’t born with the intent for them to live forever, but instead to do things within the time they’re given. The same is true for every other living thing. Most animals aren’t even really aware of mortality (in the same way that humans are, anyway) – they just reproduce because that’s what they evolved to do, and they can. Every living thing dies. We see mortality in every species (even immortal jellyfish. They don’t die of old age, sure, but they’re not invincible). It’s a fact of life in the same way that creation/birth is. We’re impermanent because the whole world is. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh only starts to fear death because Enkidu, his lover and best friend, dies in front of him, where Gilgamesh reacts by “rag[ing] like a lion” (95). This shows that yes, Gilgamesh dies, but so does Enkidu, and many others, demonstrating the world’s impermanence perfectly.

People get up and go on with their life knowing that it’ll end because, well, what else are they going to do? It’s either that, do nothing, or die sooner, and making the best of your time on Earth seems like the best option to most people. Gilgamesh’s reasoning for making the most of his life changes throughout his Epic. In the beginning, Gilgamesh barely even thinks about death. He’s only concerned with himself and his ego, demonstrated by the opening of the first chapter, which reads, “Gilgamesh went abroad in the world, but he met with none who could withstand his arms till he came to Uruk. But the men of Uruk muttered in their houses, ‘Gilgamesh sounds the toscin for his amusement, his arrogance has no bounds by day or night'” (62). When Enkidu joins hid life, Gilgamesh then lives to live with Enkidu. However, Enkidu dies soon after, leaving Gilgamesh’s life empty, however, he stills doesn’t die. Here, Gilgamesh continues living because he fears what will happen if he dies. Gilgamesh says on page 97, “‘How can I rest, how can I be at peace? Despair is in my heart. What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead. Because I am afraid of death I will go as best I can to find Utnapishtim whom they call the Faraway…'” The last page of The Epic of Gilgamesh shows his final change on how he views living: his immortality within his legacy instead of his literal life. After he visits Utnapishtim, he realizes that his search for immortality through living forever was pointless, but leaving behind a strong legacy that he had been building as King already for years would work a lot better. The book ends with a description of Gilgamesh, but more importantly of Uruk – the beautiful city his rule left behind. Gilgamesh found immortality after he stopped trying to. This speaks to humanity in general. There are so many reasons to keep living despite knowing you won’t forever. While the specific reasons change from society to society, and even person to person, most people still choose to get up and keep going every day. Some people get up for love, like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, while others get up to leave their mark on the world, like Gilgamesh towards the end of his life. Mortality feels like daunting when there are other important things to life than dying – it’s good thing that’s true.

There are two answers to “the meaning of life” question. The first one (and my favorite) is simple: biology. We evolved because of biology, we were born because of biology, we live because of biology, and we die because of biology. We evolved to live long enough to reproduce. When you boil life down that much, its meaning is pretty simple: science! However, that’s not what Gilgamesh is about. The Epic leads to answer two: the meaning of life is whatever you make it. Humans get meaning in life by doing things they love. Gilgamesh loved spending his days with Enkidu. The chapter where they meet ends with, “So Enkidu and Gilgamesh embraced and their friendship was sealed” (69). When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh breaks. This sends him into a big enough crisis to warrant journeying to the edge of the Earth. It’s pretty safe to assume that Enkidu gave Gilgamesh’s life meaning. Gilgamesh’s love for Uruk also gave his life meaning, even becoming the main source of his legacy. The final chapter says, “Men will say, ‘Who has ever ruled with might and power like him [Gilgamesh]?'” (118). In real life, people have many different purposes in life: storytelling, art, scientific discovery, friendship, uncovering history, taking care of others, rescuing cats, teaching others, and that’s just scratching the surface. Yes, everyone who does these things will die, but just like how Gilgamesh lived on through the city he improved (and the Epic that was written about him), real people live on through these things. Jesus lives on through people talking about the good he did in his life. Princess Diana lives on through possibly being the only good person in the British Royal Family. My grandpa lives on through the stories my family tells me about him, old photos we find with him in them, the business he started, and the cat he found in his backyard. These people likely won’t live forever, but they’re living on past their death through what they left behind in the world. We create a life that may not be fully eternal, but survives us for a long while. We create a longer life through stories – in photos, in books, in other people’s memories.

Like everyone else, Gilgamesh isn’t truly immortal, but in a way, he lives on. While most of us won’t live on in the same way that Gilgamesh does (or for that long), most of humanity lives on through a legacy – even if it’s small, or feels insignificant to others.

Even though The Odyssey, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Lord of the Rings are all vastly different stories. One was written thousands of years ago, while some of their authors are still alive and well. Some are written stories, while others are movies. They also have some similarities, though. For starters, they all focus mainly on one respective protagonist. The Odyssey follows Odysseus on his ten year journey back from the Trojan War, while Star Wars shows Luke Skywalker’s journey to stop Darth Vader. These protagonists are often labelled as heroes – they’re who their stories follow, they save people from harm, they oppose the characters portrayed as bad/evil, and they stick to their morals. By this definition, then yes, the protagonists in all these stories are heroes.

The definition of a hero changes on who you ask, and what story you read. A hero can be a character who saves other from harm, a character who sticks to their morals (usually ones that agree with the society the story belongs to), a character who is brave and strong, a character who is admired by others, and more – the concept is too old and spans too many cultures to have one true definition. Actions are labelled as heroic based on the society the story was written in, as I started saying earlier. For example, the Ancient Greeks emphasized bravery and victory in battle, so Odysseus, a man whose story revolves around him helping Greece win The Trojan War, made sense to see as a hero. Even though Odysseus killed a lot of men towards the end of The Odyssey, he did it because the men kept trying to be with his wife. Even though no one knew Odysseus was alive until he killed those guys, adultery was heavily looked down upon in Ancient Greece, so those murders were considered justified at the time, meaning it didn’t take away from his heroism.

Women can, in fact, be heroes (sorry, Mesopotamia). There are women heroes – Medea and Atalanta are good examples from Greek mythology. There’s no women in the stories listed above for a few reasons. First off, you didn’t list any stories with women protagonists (to make a point, I assume). Secondly, most ancient cultures and, arguably, all modern day ones had/have a sexism problem. This means that women were undervalued as important roles in society, and were less likely to be portrayed as heroes than men. This doesn’t mean that women can’t be heroes, it just means that people have incorrect beliefs about women’s abilities.

Heroes serve as models for how people should act (or, at least, how the people who wrote them think people should act). A hero’s conduct is defined by what motives their actions. For example, when Odysseus taunted the cyclops after escaping, that was motived by his pride and ego (along with a lot of his actions in the book), since he wanted the recognition for defeating the cyclops. Therefore, Odysseus’ conduct is partially defined by pride.

Heroes serve as role models and examples of a society/culture’s values/morals. For example, a society that values courage is more likely to have a lot of courageous heroes. People want to be like characters/people they look up to, so having a hero that shows a trait well helps promote it to the story’s audience. The Odyssey helped promote courage and pride in Ancient Greece by having Odysseus exemplify those traits and paint him (and, by proxy, those traits), in a good light. Heroes aren’t completely needed in a society (it’s unlikely that humanity will fall apart with them), but they definitely have value by promoting (mostly) good traits to the public. They’re a good way to instill values in a society that might need them (like how our society is in desperate need of empathy right now), but they won’t totally bring people from utterly lacking a trait to being a perfect example of it next week.

This quote – “Unhappy the land that needs heroes” – could be taken two ways. Firstly, a fictional land in need of heroes is unhappy. This one feels more obvious, but a place in need of saving probably isn’t happy because they need to be saved by something. Whether it’s a war, civil unrest, a natural disaster, or even a bad family situation, characters in need of saving are usually going through something bad, rendering them unhappy. The second, and more complicated way, of looking at this quote, is that a society that needs stories with heroes are in need of lessons that heroes can teach. That society needs a role model that’s strong, or brave, or empathic, or kind, or some other valuable trait, because the author thinks that society needs to be shown what those traits look like. A society that’s in need of a role model is believed to be lacking an important quality, which can make them unhappy because they’re missing traits that could help the culture improve.

Overall, heroes are created to fit the society they’re written into. They show the qualities a society is lacking, and the hero usually lines up with the demographics that society considers heroic. This shows how a hero is a reflection of their society’s values.

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