Comparison of "Fight Club" to "The Epic of Gilgamesh"

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Throughout the history, a person has sought for the real reason of happiness. It was sometimes linked to simple things, whereas sometimes it is thought that even all the values in the world cannot be the reason of happiness. This transforms happiness into a long, difficult adventure. For finishing this adventure people use and sacrifice other values. Furthermore, there are lots of stories, legends, epics that are about this subject. One of epics that is about this subject is" The Epic of Gilgamesh." Briefly, this epic narrates that Gilgamesh's searches about immortality and happiness after his best friend, Enkidu, dies. In addition, there is a film that manipulates reaching happiness indirectly called "Fight Club." In this film's story, there is an unhappy man (Jack - Edward Norton) that fights for happiness and tries to escape his problematic life. Another character is Jack's imaginary friend (Tyler Durden - Brad Pitt) who is a soap salesman and alter ego of Jack. Although comparing these two works' differences or similarities between them cannot easily be seen directly, we can think that they are almost alike. As a result of this, it can be said that there are connections between the characters at the two works.

When we talk about characters at these two works, we can say that Gilgamesh and Enkidu are mentioned mostly at "The Epic of Gilgamesh." Moreover, at the "Fight Club" Tyler Durden and Jack are mentioned. Although there are some similarities and differences among these characters, it looks like very complex to find who resembles to whom exactly.

The first idea comes up with the similarity between two works is that Gilgamesh's life and Jack's life. Gilgamesh's life at Uruk is monotonous and has no excitement before ...

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...s rid of Tyler Durden and he gets over his problems.

As a conclusion, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and Fight Club have similarities and differences in terms of characterization. Both of them have resembling theme which is about reaching happiness. We cannot see exactly the same characters in the epic and Fight Club. However at some points the epic parallels to Fight Club in terms of characters. The epic is a universal work that is written at ancient times and still nestles its core. If we look at the "Fight Club" we can easily say that it is projection of today's world. Characters have streses, psychologic illnesses of the modern world. We can easily realize that between this ancient work and this film, the humanity's problems are not changed so much and it seems that they will not change so much. As long as humanity exists, it will continue to pursue happiness.

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