September 22, 2005
			Gilgamesh and Emerson’s Friendship Essay

	In class today we discussed our reading of Gilgamesh and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Friendship. We expressed our interpretations of the relationships between friends in both the readings and our own life. Before I go into our feelings I want to give the background information for the stories.
	Gilgamesh is an epic written around 2200 B.C. It is a story of Gilgamesh and how he founded the country we know as Iraq. It is a grand narrative that contains a quest about a hero and serves to unify people overcoming obstacles. The main theme of this epic is transcendence and immortality. Another reason behind this epic is to help readers gather a sense of identity. 
	In the tale Gilgamesh’s best friend is named Enkindus. Together they defeat many enemies and overcome many challenges. When Gilgamesh wants to search for everlasting life Enkindus follows him to help. They both rescue each other from near death but when Gilgamesh turns down the advances of the goddess Ishcar she becomes angry and orders her father to send the bull down to kill Enkindus. However it doe not go as planned, Gilgamesh is close to being defeated when Enkindus comes to save him. Enkindus is killed. Gilgamesh then continues to look for everlasting life but finds that he does not really want to live forever with out his friend. 
	We then discussed how being friends with someone who was once a complete stanger would make us risk our on life for them. If we have no reason to become friends but just happen to encounter someone and choose to become friends why do we choose also to die for them. 
	Some points we gathered from Emerson’s Friendship essay were:
--friendship is an anticipation of mourning. When you become friends you care and worry for them and death is already in sight.
--mental emotional energy is spent on friends.
--affection and feeling of equality come with respect for a friend.
--you are always kinder to a friend than a stranger even though the friend was once a stranger.
--the thought that Emerson expresses about friendship is “I ought to be equal to every relation.”
--also “we must be our own before we can be anothers” meaning we cannot show a friend who we are on the inside if we do not know ourselves.
--trust is what all relationships is built on. 
	Basically I think we can sum up the meaning of friendship with the old saying “a friend is someone who knows everything about you and yet loves you anyway.”