Gilgamesh vs Code Talker; A Battle for the Ages

Evan’s Essay Below

The Epic of Gilgamesh has influenced literature in many ways. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a super old book, dating back to 2500 BC in Mesopotamia. I compared it to Code Talker, a book about Navajo marines in WWII by Joseph Bruchac. Gilgamesh and Code Talker are similar in their settings and plots, while they differ in character traits.

Code Talker and Gilgamesh are similar in their plots. In Gilgamesh, the title character meets Enkidu; a man made by the gods to be the exact opposite of him and made to destroy him. Instead, E and G become “brothers”, so to speak, and they fight together in battle. Pg 90, “They held hands like brothers. They walked side by side. They became true friends.” This is similar to Code Talker because Ned meets a bunch of different Navajo marines just like him who learn the code and learn to fight together. This is also similar to where the books take place (fade out, fade into paragraph 3)

The books are also similar in their settings. Gilgamesh takes place in Uruk, a large city with citizens with a manipulative king who is desperate for dominance. Pg 88, “When he walked into the main street of Uruk, the people gathered around him, marveling, the crowds kept pressing closer to see him, like a little baby they kissed his feet.” Similarly, a portion of Code Talker takes place in a Navajo boarding school, where they punish the students if they speak their native language of Navajo, the only language they know. These connect in the overall society of the places, with overall fake people, ignoring who’s at fault for the fakeness. While the books are  similar in their settings, what about the characters themselves?

As much as the plots and settings are similar between books, they differ in their characters. The main characters of Gilgamesh, G himself as well as Enkidu are huge men that fight and are compared to wild bulls every few pages. They don’t go through a normal citizen’s lifestyle, many things are different, like how all the citizens kiss their feet whenever they walk around town, that must be strange. Pg 87, “I will go to Uruk now, to the palace of Gilgamesh the mighty king. I will challenge him. I will shout to his face. I am the mightiest! I am the one who can make the world tremble! I am supreme!”. This quote is basically saying “I’m better than him, I’ll destroy him, and here’s a list of ways that I’ll get my point across to him.” In contrast, Ned and his fellow marines aren’t big on war-esque fighting, they’re more about the adventure and and protecting their country, and less about the violence. While G and E are huge strong men that like to stab things with their 100-pound swords or whatever, Ned sees himself more of a “one in a large army” type, rather than a huge man with muscles.

In conclusión, Gilgamesh and Code Talker are similar in their settings and plots, while they’re a bit different in their character traits. Their plots are similar in that they both fight alongside their friends and companions and have many adventures with them. Their settings are also similar, they both have large populations with naive citizens who don’t really know what they’re doing, but do it anyway. The citizens are also loyal to big powerful men, and obey them constantly. But the stories are different in the character traits. While Gilgamesh has large, manly, kings as the main characters, Code Talker has more of the quiet type of traits and less of the boisterous and “wild bull” energy. Gilgamesh might have influenced Code Talker when Ned goes on these expeditions with his fellow marines just like Gilgamesh and Enki do.