Full Series Darth Maul and Savage Opress as Gilgamesh and Enkidu

For those of you who read Gilgamesh, you will know him as the almighty king of Uruk who had a complete and utter obsession with immortality and always strove for more. In order to balance him out, the gods sent Enkidu, his double and brother, to keep him in check. Enkidu himself was civilized through Shamhat, a priestess who practiced her "love arts" upon Enkidu.



Now, knowing GL's affinity for mythological allusions, we can take a look at Darth Maul and Savage Opress.



Darth Maul, who obviously has an affinity for immortality and always desires the next step. Savage, who was brought into society as Maul's successor by a deceitful woman. Thats really just the tip of the similarities.

Discuss here, if you may.

 

Should change thread title to Randy, not "Savage Oppress."

 

I thought Qymaen Jai Sheelal and Ronderu were sorta-kinda considered Gilgamesh and Enkidu? I'm a little hazy with the new Grievous background story stuff.

 

I <3 this thread

 

His name is Savage Oppress not "Randy"

 

No his name is sav·age.

Said like the word "savage".

Personally i think that way of saying his name makes more sense. After all he sure fits the definition of being savage.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/savage

He should be referred by that name more, we only heard some bounty hunter call him that in "Revenge" when he mispronounced his name.


PS: His name is also Randy. He can be called Randy or Savage, 2 names for the same creature. If the name "Randy" was in the title instead of savage everyone here would know what Randy was referring to. So Randy is just as much his name as Savage is.

 

Okay, can we please get back to the topic intended instead of letting it devolve into another GGrievous "humor" thread?

 

Yup!


Problem with this analogy is that Gilgamesh was a real homebody. He was defined by his home, obsessed with his home, etc etc. Plus had Ishtar harping over him all the time. Maul is neither obsessed with any sort of "home" (I can't think of anything in his life that would serve as a proper analogy without a stretch), nor has a demigoddess-type figure harping over him. Talzin doesn't really fit that role at all... unless...

Spoiler: Major Spoiler

It's Sidious. He might work, if you take the romance part out. With Savage/Enkidu dead and Sidious leaving Maul's life in ruins, the next step of the tale would have Maul going on some hero's journey-type adventure to find his place in the universe. Hmmmm.

 

This is a very interesting thread I'm going to bump because I was about to make a thread about what Savage's actual role in this series was. What is his purpose as a character? What is his story arc? What is he going to learn by the end of this season, and was his character worth creating in the first place?

 

I think there's more of a parallel with mythological brothers or twins:

Cain/Abel (Genesis)
Jacob/Esau (Genesis)
Remus/Romulus (Roman)
Hunahpu/Xabalanqu (Maya)
Castor/Pollux (Greek)

There's a million of them and many parallels to Maul/Savage.

I'm not sure about Gilgamesh, there don't seem to be many parallels, can you name any more? Shamhat has sex with Inkidu, seduces him, and he loses his covering of animal hair. The metaphor is completely different. Talzin is closer to Baba Yaga, a crone/witch figure, and she is (so far) sexless. Savage is created as a kind of "poison apple" (Snow White) or "Trojan Horse", to satisfy Asaj's desire for revenge, seemingly a prelude to her initiation. Maul survives out of pure will, he doesn't seem to desire immortality. And Gilgamesh's quest for immortality is closer to Anakin's state of mind in ROtS than Maul's (he's mourning the death of Inkidu and desires to turn back death), except that Gelgamesh is forced to accept the inevitability of death. One parallel I can see is Gilgamesh's journey into the "underworld" which mirrors the quest that Savage undertakes to find Maul but I think there are closer parallels in other traditions.

One interesting aspect of their story is that of Talzin as mother figure, and Sidious/Dooku as father figures. In Jungian terms, you could see Sidious as consciousness (personal ego), Dooku as the unconscious undoing the work of the conscious mind, and Talzin as anima or the female aspect. Both Maul and Savage could be aspects of the "shadow", that which is repressed but rises to wreak havoc. Sidious strives to bring order to the galaxy, mechanical systems of oppressive organization; Dooku represents extensions of ancient traditions and codes of honor, he breaks the "rule of two" by training his "assassins" who both become agents of chaos disrupting the carefully laid plans of Sidious. Talzin is a mirror image of both, with her cloistered cult and her adherence to "the old ways". In Jungian terms, the aim is to bring all the aspects of consciousness into balance, as reflected by the dilemma of the Father/Son/Daughter of Mortis. It appears that Sidious will attempt that by killing off his "shadows" and later by replacing the hard-to-contain Dooku with the more easily manipulated Anakin. Jung would not be pleased!

Anyway, interesting stuff!