Comparing Gilgamesh And Cormac Mccarthy's The Epic

The Road by Cormac McCarthy and “The Epic Of Gilgamesh” both tell a story about a hero’s travels to accomplish a task. In The Road, the Man’s goal was to survive and keep his son alive, while Gilgamesh searched for immortality. The authors use stages of a hero’s journey to help shape the character's adventure including close mentors, entering the belly of the beast, the reward and facing enemies. When comparing these stories based on aspects found in a hero’s journey, there are many similarities and differences on how the author uses them throughout the story.

In both journeys, the heros have a mentor that is very close to them and keeps their goals on track. In the horrible world they live in, “you won't survive for yourself... A person

During the Man’s journey, they encountered a group of people on the Road. The Man quickly told the Boy to “‘keep your face down. Don't look’… He wallowed in to the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings” (McCarthy 91). Whenever a group passes by on the road, the Man and Boy hide in hopes that the people will not know they were there. They fear for their lives because they don’t know if they are cannibals or the Good Guys. A conflict on the road could lead to all their supplies being taken, getting injured, or killed. Approaching their enemies would not help them succeed in accomplishing their task, unlike Gilgamesh. In his journey for immortality, he told Enkidu, “The fierce giant Humbaba lives at the base of the Cedar Mountains… Come with me to slay him, and then we will have banished all evil from the land” (“Gilgamesh” 34). Gilgamesh’s mission requires him to face many enemies and run towards death to see if he is worthy of immortality. Without killing the giant Humbaba or the lions to pass through the mountains, he would have never discovered the secret to becoming immortal and would always be unsatisfied. The two heroes face their enemies in two vastly different