Knox Daniel - Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

 I found our reading of Thomas Van Nortwick’s Somewhere I Have Never Traveled fascinating, both for its exploration of famous heroic journeys and its explanation of the second self. I knew next to nothing about the Epic of Gilgamesh, so I enjoyed learning about it and found it especially interesting that it involved the first instance of the second self in Western literature. Additionally, this quote from Van Nortwick on page 28 sheds light on the importance of the katabasis trope: “To look death in the face and return to the living is the ultimate proof of a hero’s extraordinary stature. On another level, the journey often represents a going into the dark places of oneself, to find certain truths hidden from us in our conscious life.” For Odysseus and Aeneas, they went to the underworld to find a way back home, while Gilgamesh does so to save himself. I had originally learned about this while reading the Aeneid in 11th grade Latin class, so it was cool to return to it from a different perspective. 


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