The Epic Hero
...e, which is his transition into the civilized world. When Gilgamesh denies the goddess, Anu, sexual and relationship needs. The wrathful nature of Anu, a goddess, provides the last transition for Enkidu and Gilgamesh together, altogether changing the direction of the play and character of Gilgamesh. Anu, tells her father to send down the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay it and commit an act of hubris which leads to the death of Enkidu, saddening and stopping Gilgamesh search for immortality. In this epic poem, The Odyssey, women are respected and seen as monumental figures in the human and God societies. But are confined within the barriers of a male-dominated society and are forced to be submissive. Odysseus wife, Penelope, is a smart and willful woman who waits twenty years for her husband’s return while suitors desecrate her home. Penelope stuck in a male dominated society has to tactfully avoids the brute suitors, remains faithful to Odysseus, even though she does not know if he is alive or deceased. Penelope, although, she hated the suitors had to be submissive to them because she is a women. Unlike Penelope, Arete, the Queen of the Akahdians, is the most influential of her kingdom of great shipmen. Oddesuyus flees to her for her blessing to give him shelter and transportation back to his homeland and but ultimately out of her submissiveness to Odysseus and his crewmen leads to the fatality of her people by Poseidon. On his way back to Ithaca, Odysseus and his crewmen land on Kirke, a goddess, island. Kirke seduces and turns Odysseus’s men into swine by a magical elixir but falls submissive to Odysseus when he overcomes her power. She immediately opens her bed to him, turns his crew back into men, provides him shelter and ultimately is the last linkage to his way home. Even the might Athena, daughter of Zeus, is submissive to male figures within the poem. Athena is Odysseus’s major aid throughout the poem. She advises and leads him through trials that Posidion had laid out for him. Eventhough she is a goddess, she cannot overpower the might of Posidion. She must like Penelope, be a tactian and go around or avoid Posidion’s fury. When Odessyus finally gets to his home his presence is unknown by anyone until Eurycleia, his loyal servent, washes his feet and notices a scar on his thigh. Immediately when she recognizes him, he grabs her, and tells her not tell anyone or he would kill her. She of course abides by him but brushes off his harshness as nothing. Her reaction proves her subservience to Odysseus. In the plays Oedipus the King and Sakuntala and The Ring of Recollection women are the weaknesses of the tragic/ epic hero. In Oedipus the King, Oedipus is trying to lead a kingdom dying of disease, which he is the cause of. Jocasta, the wife Oedipus, when first introduced in the play, attempts to ma...