Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [144]
In the essay that follows, we have used boldface to track the “one” point—the as-yet-underdeveloped thesis idea—that the writer has attached to each of his examples (1 on 10). Brackets and ellipses […] indicate where we have abridged the essay.
Flood Stories
[1] The role of people, as reflected in Genesis, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, is solely to please the gods. Men, as the gods’ subordinates, exist to do right in the gods’ eyes and make them feel more like gods; for without men, whom could the gods be gods of? […]
[2] In Genesis, for example, God created humans in his own image or likeness, and when they displeased Him, He destroyed them. If God could see wickedness in his creations, perhaps it was like seeing wickedness in himself. Further, the idea of having evidence of God being able to create an imperfect, “wicked” race of humans may have been a point God wasn’t willing to deal with: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.” It seems as though God had become unhappy with his creations so they were to be destroyed. Like a toy a child no longer has use for, humankind was to be wasted.
[3] Similarly, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, God made humanity and “fashioned it into the image of the all-governing gods.” Again here, humans were made in the gods’ image to serve as an everlasting monument of their glorification, to honor them and do good by them. In other words, humans spent less time making the gods happy and therefore made them unhappy. Some men even questioned the reality of the gods’ existence and the strength of their power. Lyacon, for example, had a driving tendency to try to belittle the gods and make them look like fools. The gods were very displeased with this trend, and now the entire race had to be destroyed. A flood would be sent to wipe out the race of men. [The writer then summarizes several examples in which the wicked are destroyed and a few upstanding citizens are preserved and arrives at the following conclusion:] Thus, the justification of yet another flood to appease the gods’ egos.
[4] Further evidence of humans as being a mere whim of the gods to make them happy lies in the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is obvious the gods weren’t concerned with humankind, but rather with their own comfort. As the story goes, Enlil, the god of earth, wind, and air, couldn’t bear the noise humans were making while he tried to sleep, so he gathered all the gods together, and thus they jointly decided to get rid of their grief of having all the humans around by destroying them. Ea [the god of wisdom], however, warned one man (Utnapishtim) of the flood to come. He told him to build a boat for himself and his wife and for the “seeds of all living creatures.” […]
[5] Enlil later repented the harshness of his actions, deified Utnapishtim and his wife and then had the two live far away “on the distance of the rivers’ mouths.” It possibly could have been belittling to have Utnapishtim and his wife speaking to the new race of humans in terms of how rash and mindlessly the gods were capable of acting, so he immortalized them and had them live far out of the reach of human ears—”the secret of the gods.”
[6] It seems that the main objective of the gods was to remain gods; for that is what made them happy. And humanity’s role, then, was as the gods’ stepping-stone to their happiness. […] Witnessing the fall of humankind, for the gods, was like witnessing imperfection in themselves, and thus their fall; anything causing these feelings didn’t do the gods any good and therefore could be terminated without a second thought. It was the job of human beings to make the gods happy, and upon failure at this task, they could be “fired” (death), only to be replaced