True immortality is a human impossibility, as is eternal
youth in life. Even then, for millennia people have sought out the Fountain of
Youth or whatever will bring them perpetual youth in the mortal world. But,
what purpose does a life without death have?
Our own realization of death’s imminence forces us to find a
purpose for our lives. Many who devote their lives to a purpose don't expect
die as a result of pursuing that purpose as some have. A grand example of dying
for a purpose would be Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course, he did not choose to
die fighting for civil rights, but knew it was a possibility. In death, King
became immortalized. If he had lived a longer life, without a doubt, his life’s
termination wouldn't have stood for something so significant. Untimely deaths
for the sake of great causes are one such example of glory; self-sacrifices are
another.
Many ancient epics stress the ideal of finding a purpose in
Life to achieve some sort of immortality in Death. Mortals are doomed to die
and can never achieve perpetual youth in the mortal realm. Death is something
that must not be feared, but accepted as a truth. Since death comes for us all,
we should do something in this life worth the glory and immortality in the
mortal world.
Even then, many heroes of ancient literature went off on
journeys seeking immortality. Each immortality quest always involved traveling
to the ends of the earth, or even to the Land of the Dead itself. To learn more
about life, it has been a long-standing theme that you first need to understand
death.
Ultimately, those who set off on these quests gain great
knowledge. But, they never find what they set off to find in the first place.
This is true in many ancient legends. They do, however, gain a sort of
immortality through the legends and tales written about them and their
journeys. Their adventures also mold them to become better people after their
perspective-changing experiences.
Immortality Isn’t
Just Eternal Life
There are many kinds of immortality that can be achieved
besides eternal life. In fact, the quest for immortality in literature was not
originally a quest for eternal life. In humanity’s earliest literature, the
quest was more for greater knowledge. That’s mostly because the characters in
many ancient stories were already immortal, as they were gods. Gilgamesh is the
first to actually define his own journey as a search for eternal life. Later,
the story of Achilles in the Iliad is another example of such an immortality
quest. Perhaps, it is a better one, as well.
The first known story of a quest for immortality is in the
Epic of Gilgamesh. All mortals, as it is said in Gilgamesh, are doomed to die.
Gilgamesh is told this twice, first by Siduri the barmaid, “You will never find
that life for which you are looking,” Siduri said, “When the gods created man
they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping.”
Utnapishtim later told Gilgamesh much the same thing,
reiterating the meanings of mortality. “There is no permanence. Do we build a
house to stand for ever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do
brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers
endure?” Nothing lasts forever. “Life and death [the gods] allot but the day of
death they do not disclose.”
It's of the utmost importance that we accept death. In the
days we have, it's important to do the best that we can to live this life and
leave our respective marks on the world. That is the only true sort of earthly
immortality. Tales immortalize folks in a sense, also. Cities are not
realistically permanent, but can stand as legacies for countless years
afterward. Even after they no longer stand, they live through the tales spoken
of them. None of us are truly immortal. Yet, our legacies can succeed us, through
our posterity and what we build for others, for many years to come.
The quest for immortality will never bring you eternal life,
but searching for it can bring great wisdom. Families and cities will live on
long after you pass from this life. What you leave behind of yourself for the
world, through the building of cities or through your children, is a sort of
continuation of your own life, and a kind of immortality.
Gilgamesh himself ultimately gains a sort of immortality in
building the walls of Uruk. He said,
“Urshanabi, climb up on to the wall of Uruk, inspect its
foundation terrace, and examine well the brickwork; see if it is not of brunt
bricks; and did not the seven wise men lay these foundations? One third of the
whole is city, one third is garden, and one third is field, with precinct of
the goddess Ishtar. These parts and the precinct are all Uruk” (Davis 90).
Gilgamesh’s “children” are the people of Uruk. After his
long, great journey he finally becomes a great leader for his people. His story
is immortalized, as well, and his legacy survived to today.
One’s Quest for
Immortality Involves Great Sacrifice
A later example of a similar
quest for immortality is in Homer’s Iliad. Achilles, or Akhilleus as he
is known in the Iliad, embarks on such a quest. However, in the process,
he must sacrifice his own humanity to be immortal; as a rule in the context for
the story, as long as you are human, you can not be immortal. In the Iliad,
Achilles has a choice between eternal immortality in death and mortal
immortality through glory.
“My mother, Thetis of the
silvery feet,” Achilles says in Book Nine of the Iliad, “tells me of two
possible destinies carrying me toward death: two ways: if on the one hand I
remain to fight around Troy town, I lose all hope of home but gain unfading
glory; on the other, if I sail aback to my own land my glory fails – but a long
life lies ahead for me.”
Achilles finds himself with a
choice between two mortal destinies. He contemplates these choices later in
Book Nine,
“Now I think no riches can
compare with being alive… A man may come by cattle and sheep in raids; tripods
he buys, and tawny-headed horses; but his life's breath cannot be hunted back
or be recaptured once it pass his lips.”
Basically, once you die, you
can never get life back again. So, what you die for must be important. He had a
choice between dying young as a legend in a war or living a long life and dying
a relatively anonymous farmer.
Achilles, knowing that death
in war was inevitable, flees the battlefield in hopes that he will be able to
live out a long life elsewhere. After Achilles leaves the battlefield, however,
the war begins to go badly for the Greek army. In the meantime, Hektor slays
Achilles’ best friend, Patroklos, and takes from him the armor that Achilles
had left with him. Patroklos’ death gives Achilles a new perspective on the
meaning of life.
Achilles would rather die in the glory of battle than live
out a relatively unknown, though relatively happy life, away from the field.
Enraged by the death of his great friend Patroklos, Achilles goes back to
avenge him and kills Hektor. This is even though Achilles knows he is fated to
die in the process. “I must reject this life, my heart tells me, reject the
world of men, if Hektor does not feel my battering spear tear the life out of
him, making him pay in his own blood for the slaughter of Patroklos!” Avenging
his greatest friend was worth more to Achilles than keeping his own mortal
life, living happily and in peace elsewhere, never having become a legend.
The great Achilles finds that he can be immortal only in Death. “Even as he
spoke, the end came, and death hid him; spirit from body fluttered to
undergloom, bewailing fate that made him leave his youth and manhood in the
world." As he died, Akhilleus spoke again. He said: ‘Die, make an end. I
shall accept my own whenever Zeus and the other gods desire.’”
When Patroklos died, Achilles
came to realize that there is no eternal youth for any man, even a man as great
as his friend Patroklos. Achilles gives in to his desire to become immortal,
and gains that immortality in the only way that a mortal can, by dying in
combat to gain glory and immortality in Death forever. He knows that at least
he will have a death honored and glorified for years to come. Both he and
Hektor die in glory from their epic battle: Hektor for slaying the greatest of
all warriors in Achilles, and Achilles for slaying the killer of many men
including his dear old friend Patroklos.
Still, in the end, Achilles
does achieve a sort of immortality. He never finds the eternal youth that he
most sought; however; he realizes that he will never find that in his mortal
life anyway. He ends up dying as a legend of war and lives eternally in death
among the gods as a glorified man for sacrificing himself to avenge his best
friend’s death.
In retrospect, Achilles may
have been far happier with a long earthly life, but he decided that his fate on
the battlefield was the only way to gain immortality which he sought so much.
Perhaps, however, he did not gain as much glory in death as he would have liked
– Hektor receives the greater funeral in the end. However, by giving in to his
fate, Achilles still did indeed gain that mortal immortality, as he is
remembered still today.
What Sort of Immortality Can We Choose to Achieve?
Through both of these
stories, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Iliad, it’s clear none of
us can cheat our fate of eventual death. It is only when and how we die that we
may have some control over. Achilles sacrifices himself for mortal immortality.
Eternal youth in life cannot exist; it is simply against the laws of nature. As
both stories reiterate, eternal life is reserved only to the gods.
Living a long life perhaps is
not what people may think it is, either. If that life does not bring one
immortal glory and honor to mortal existence, to some it may not seem worth
living. Achilles felt that his sacrifice was necessary to give his life and
death purpose. He actually had a choice between a long life and dying in great
glory. The death of his friend made him realize that even in a lengthy mortal
life, there would be an eventual death. So, Achilles wanted his death to stand
for something important. Most people do not have that choice to make. For those
who would have it, only the most heroic would choose to die in youth, rather
than to die solely in the relative anonymity of old age.
This is not to say that long
life is overrated by any means. It is true, however, that the majority of us
are forgotten as we grow older; it is a very rare breed that continues their
“glory days” later in life. What we can all learn from the stories of Achilles
and Gilgamesh is that we need to discover purpose in our lives much as they
did.
Our own mortality is what
most defines us. We has human beings need to work hard and look at ourselves to
find our callings in life, as well as to find our places in the annals of
immortal legend and fame. Perhaps not all of us believe that we are destined
for any kind of immortality. But, by having children or by doing the best we
can to make the world around us a little bit better, we can achieve a small
piece of immortality for ourselves with our legacy.
We all have a choice: do we
die young a hero or do we die old, having had a relatively fulfilled and happy
life? Whatever your choice, although your name may not be among the great
heroes, you can hopefully rest assured that a part of you will live on forever.
Note: The translations of
“The Epic of Gilgamesh” and “The Iliad” quoted in this essay are from The
Bedford Anthology of World Literature: The Ancient World, Beginnings - 100 C.E.
edited by Paul Davis and published in 2004 by Bedford/St.Martins in New York.
Keywords: gilgamesh quest for immortality, immortality in
literature, immortality quest, quest for immortality, the quest for immortality
