thesis for gilgamesh essay

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Ira Spar Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The myth known today as the Epic of Gilgamesh was considered in ancient times to be one of the great masterpieces of cuneiform literature . Copies of parts of the story have been found in Israel, Syria, and Turkey, and references to the hero are attested in Greek and Roman literature.

The tale revolves around a legendary hero named Gilgamesh (Bilgames in Sumerian), who was said to be the king of the Sumerian city of Uruk. His father is identified as Lugalbanda, king of Uruk , and his mother is the wise cow goddess Ninsun. No contemporary information is known about Gilgamesh, who, if he was in fact an historical person, would have lived around 2700 B.C. Nor is there any preserved early third-millennium version of the poem. During the twenty-first century B.C., Shulgi, ruler of the Sumerian city of Ur , was a patron of the literary arts. He sponsored a revival of older literature and established academies of scholars at his capital Ur and at the holy city of Nippur. Shulgi claimed Lugalbanda as his father and Gilgamesh as his brother.

Although little of the courtly literature of the Shulgi academies survives, and Sumerian ceased to be a spoken language soon after the end of his dynasty, Sumerian literature continued to be studied in the scribal schools of the following Old Babylonian period . Five Sumerian stories about Gilgamesh were copied in these schools. These tales, which were not part of an epic cycle, were originally oral narratives sung at the royal court of the Third Dynasty of Ur.

“Gilgamesh and Akka” describes the triumph of the hero over his overlord Akka, ruler of the city of Kish. “Gilgamesh and Huwawa” recounts the journey of the hero and his servant Enkidu to the cedar mountains, where they encounter and slay the giant Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. A third tale, “Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven,” deals with Gilgamesh’s rejection of the amorous advances made by Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. Seeking revenge, the goddess sends the Bull of Heaven to kill Gilgamesh, but the hero, with the assistance of Enkidu, slays the monster. In “Gilgamesh and the Netherworld,” the hero loses two sport-related objects, which fall into the Netherworld. Enkidu descends into the depths to find them and, upon his return to life, describes the horrid fate that awaits the dead. In the final composition, “The Death of Gilgamesh,” the hero dreams that the gods are meeting to review his exploits and accomplishments. They decide that he, like all of humankind, shall not be granted eternal life.

In addition to the Sumerian compositions, young scribes studying in the Old Babylonian schools made copies of different oral stories about the hero Gilgamesh. One noteworthy tale was sung in Akkadian rather than in Sumerian. Called “Surpassing All Other Kings,” this poem combined some elements of the Sumerian narrative into a new Akkadian tale. Only fragments of this composition survive. By the end of the eighteenth century B.C., large areas of southern Mesopotamia, including Nippur, were abandoned; the scribal academies closed as the economy collapsed. A shift in political power and culture took place under the newly ascendant Babylonian dynasties centered north of Sumer. Hundreds of years later, toward the end of the second millennium B.C., literary works in Babylonian dominated scribal learning. Differing versions of classic compositions, including the Akkadian Gilgamesh story, proliferated, and translations and adaptations were made by poets in various lands to reflect local concerns.

Some time in the twelfth century B.C., Sin-leqi-unninni, a Babylonian scholar, recorded what was to become a classic version of the Gilgamesh tale. Not content to merely copy an old version of the tale, this scholar most likely assembled various versions of the story from both oral and written sources and updated them in light of the literary concerns of his day, which included questions about human mortality and the nature of wisdom. “Surpassing All Other Kings” now became a new composition called “He Who Saw the Deep.” In the poem, Sin-leqi-unninni recast Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s companion and brought to the fore concerns about unbridled heroism, the responsibilities of good governance, and the purpose of life. The new version of the epic explains that Gilgamesh, although he is king of Uruk, acts as an arrogant, impulsive, and irresponsible ruler. Only after a frustrating and vain attempt to find eternal life does he emerge from immaturity to realize that one’s achievements, rather than immortality, serve as an enduring legacy.

The poem begins by explaining that Gilgamesh, although he thought that he “was wise in all matters,” had to endure a journey of travail in order to find peace. Two-thirds human and one-third deity, the hero as king is unaware of his own strengths and weaknesses. He oppresses his own people. In response to complaints by the citizens of Uruk, the gods create Enkidu, a double, who becomes the hero’s friend and companion. Initially described as a wild animal-like creature, Enkidu (“Lord of the Pleasant Place”) has sex with a temple prostitute and is transformed into a civilized being. No longer animal-like, he now possesses wisdom “like a god,” a distinguishing characteristic of humans. After an initial confrontation, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends and decide to make a name for themselves by journeying to the Cedar Forest to fight against Humbaba, the giant whom the gods have placed as guardian of the sacred trees. The two kill the monster and take cedar back to Uruk as their prize. Back in Uruk, the goddess Ishtar, sexually aroused by Gilgamesh’s beauty, tries to seduce him. Repulsed, the headstrong goddess sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk and punish Gilgamesh. But Gilgamesh and Enkidu meet the challenge and Gilgamesh slays the bull. The gods retaliate by causing Enkidu to fall ill and die. Gilgamesh, devastated by the death of his friend, now realizes that he is part mortal and sets out on a fruitless journey to seek immortality.

On his travels in search of the secret of everlasting life, Gilgamesh meets a scorpion man and later a divine female tavern keeper who tries to dissuade him from continuing his search. But Gilgamesh is arrogant and determined. Upon learning that Uta-napishtim (“I Found Life”), a legendary hero who had obtained eternal life, dwelt on an island across the “Waters of Death,” Gilgamesh crosses the sea and is greeted by the immortal hero. Uta-napishtim explains to Gilgamesh that his quest is in vain, as humans were created to be mortal. But upon questioning, Uta-napishtim reveals that he was placed by the gods on this remote island after being informed that the world would be destroyed by a great flood . Building a boxlike ark in the shape of a cube, Uta-napishtim took on board his possessions, his riches, his family members, craftsmen, and creatures of the earth. After riding out the storm, he and his wife were granted immortality and settled on the island far from civilization. Devastated by this news and realizing that he, too, will someday expire, Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and examines its defensive wall. Finally, he comprehends that the everlasting fame he so vainly sought lay not in eternal life but in his accomplishments on behalf of both his people and his god.

Attempts to identify Gilgamesh in art are fraught with difficulty. Cylinder seals from the Akkadian period (ca. 2350–2150 B.C.) onward showing nude heroes with beards and curls grappling with lions and bovines cannot be identified with Gilgamesh. They are more likely to be associated with the god Lahmu (“The Hairy One”). A terracotta plaque in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, depicts a bearded hero grasping an ogre’s wrist while raising his right hand to attack him with a club. To his left, a beardless figure pins down the monster’s arm, pulls his hair, and is about to pierce his neck with a knife. This scene is often associated with the death of Humbaba. The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic clearly describes Enkidu as being almost identical to Gilgamesh, but no mention is made of the monster’s long hair, and although Gilgamesh is said to strike the monster with a dagger, he holds an axe rather than a club in his hand. The scene on the Berlin plaque may reflect the older Sumerian story wherein Enkidu is described as a companion rather than a double of the hero. In this older tale, Enkidu is the one who “severed [Huwawa’s] head at the neck.” Similar images appear on cylinder seals of the second and first millennium B.C.

Spar, Ira. “Gilgamesh.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gilg/hd_gilg.htm (April 2009)

Further Reading

Foster, Benjamin R., trans. and ed. The Epic of Gilgamesh . New York: Norton, 2001.

George, Andrew, trans. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian . London: Allen Lane, 1999.

Additional Essays by Ira Spar

• Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Creation Myths .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ Flood Stories .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Deities .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan .” (April 2009)
• Spar, Ira. “ The Origins of Writing .” (October 2004)

Related Essays

• Flood Stories
• The Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods (2004–1595 B.C.)
• Mesopotamian Creation Myths
• The Origins of Writing
• Ur: The Royal Graves
• The Akkadian Period (ca. 2350–2150 B.C.)
• The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan
• The Middle Babylonian / Kassite Period (ca. 1595–1155 B.C.) in Mesopotamia
• Ur: The Ziggurat
• Uruk: The First City
• West Asia: Ancient Legends, Modern Idioms

List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Mesopotamia
• Mesopotamia, 1000 B.C.–1 A.D.
• Mesopotamia, 1–500 A.D.
• Mesopotamia, 2000–1000 B.C.
• Mesopotamia, 8000–2000 B.C.
• 2nd Millennium B.C.
• 3rd Millennium B.C.
• Akkadian Period
• Anatolia and the Caucasus
• Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Ancient Roman Literature / Poetry
• Anthropomorphism
• Babylonian Art
• Cylinder Seal
• Dagger / Knife
• Deity / Religious Figure
• Eastern Mediterranean
• Greek Literature / Poetry
• Immortality
• Literature / Poetry
• Mesopotamian Art
• Mythical Creature
• Religious Art
• Sumerian Art
• Uruk Period

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The Epic of Gilgamesh

April 30, 2020 | yalepress | Ancient History , Literature

John Carey —

The oldest surviving literary work is The Epic of Gilgamesh . It was composed nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia (roughly equivalent to where Iraq and eastern Syria are now). No one knows who wrote it, or why, or what readership or audience it was intended for. It is preserved on clay tablets in the earliest known alphabet, which is called cuneiform script because the scribes who wrote it formed the letters by making wedge-shaped (cuneiform) dents in wet clay with bits of reed.

For centuries the secret of how to read cuneiform script was lost. Then, in the 1870s, a self-taught, working-class Londoner called George Smith, studying clay tablets in the British Museum, cracked the code and brought The Epic of Gilgamesh to light.

The epic tells the story of a king, Gilgamesh, whose mother is a goddess. He rules the city of Uruk (now Warka in southern Iraq). He is a great warrior and builds a magnificent city using glazed bricks, a new technique. But he is lustful and tyrannical, seizing and violating brides on their wedding day. So the gods create a wild man called Enkidu to stop Gilgamesh oppressing his people.

Enkidu is made from the clay the mother goddess washes from her hands, and he is an animal rather than a human. He is covered in hair and lives with the gazelles, eating grass as they do. However, a votaress of the temple in Uruk seduces him and after seven days and nights of fervent love-making he becomes human. She teaches him to wear clothes and eat human food.

Gilgamesh falls in love with Enkidu, caressing him like a woman. But when Enkidu tries to stop him violating brides, they fight. They turn out to be equally matched, so they kiss and make friends and embark on heroic adventures. Together they go on a quest to the Cedar Forest and kill the monster Humbaba who lives there. This angers the gods, since Humbaba was their monster. While Gilgamesh is washing after the fight the goddess Ishtar sees him, falls in love, and proposes marriage. But she is the goddess of sex and violence and all her lovers come to a bad end, so Gilgamesh rejects her. She is angry, and calls on her father, the sky god, to send another monster, the Bull of Heaven, to kill Gilgamesh. Instead Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull, which angers the gods still more, and they sentence Enkidu to death.

Gilgamesh mourns him bitterly and sets off to discover the secret of eternal life. He is ferried across the waters of death and finds the immortal man Utnapishtim, who survived the great flood, in which all other humans died, by following the gods’ instructions and building a boat. Gilgamesh dives into the ocean to find a plant that is said to make whoever possesses it young again. Though he finds it, and brings it to the surface, it is stolen by a snake, and Utnapishtim tells him that no one can defeat death. So Gilgamesh returns to Uruk, having learned that, though he is mighty and famous, he will be equal in death with all other human beings.

From A Little History of Poetry by John Carey. Published by Yale University Press in 2020. Reproduced with permission.

John Carey  is emeritus professor at Oxford. His books include  The Essential  “Paradise Lost,”  What Good Are the Arts?,  studies of Donne and Dickens, and a biography of William Golding.  The Unexpected Professor,  his memoir, was a  Sunday Times  best-seller.

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Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay

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• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
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Introduction

Gilgamesh and enkidu: friendship in the epic, what do we learn from enkidu and gilgamesh’s friendship.

All through history, stories, poems, and songs have common themes. This fact played a significant role in explaining some aspects of societal life. One of these is friendship. No one in the world does not need a friend; therefore, it is a necessary aspect of life.

The role of friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh is vital. The epic was appearing in a period of nearly a thousand years from about 2500 to 1500 B.C. Gilgamesh, who is two-thirds god and one-third man, is the oppressive fifth king of Uruk while Enkidu is the ruler of the animals. This essay unfolds the theme of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu that develops in the course of the story.

As the story begins, King Gilgamesh of Uruk is depicted to be in mature manhood and superior to all other men in both beauty and strength. No one could match up with him in the ancient Mesopotamian society. The unsatisfied cravings of his demigod nature could not find a suitable mate for him in love or war. Besides, his unsatisfied daemonic energy made the people of Uruk be dissatisfied with his reign.

Because he lacked love and friendship, Gilgamesh turned to excess and indulgence, and he celebrated his victories with too much debauched partying, which annoyed the individuals in the city as well as the gods in the temples. Because of his oppressive rule, the people asked for help from the gods since they feared that someday Gilgamesh would ask for a more significant part of his divine heritage, challenge the gods and even rock the pillars of heaven if he was not controlled.

Therefore, to counter the threat, the gods devised a plan of creating Enkidu, who was the Gilgamesh’s friend and his mirror image. They believed that the king would divert his dangerous energies toward that rival, thereby stop challenging heaven. The gods then made Enkidu from clay and left him in the wilderness to live and eat as the animals do.

In the wilderness, though he somehow established a friendship with the wild animals, his cravings for a mate were not adequately satisfied. Therefore, when a harlot from the city seduced him, he quickly agreed to leave and live in the great-civilized city of Uruk. When Enkidu goes there, he seems not to like Gilgamesh at first since the two engaged in a fight soon after they met.

However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu quickly started to like one another. How did they become friends? In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the theme of friendship appears when the two giants become very close and begin to rely on one another in conquering their enemies with ease. After that, the solidarity between the two of them helps in developing the plot of the story. All in all, it is a mixture of morality, pure adventure, and tragedy, as subsequent experiences are based on this newfound eternal comradeship.

The newly found comrades soon grow weak and become indolent with city life. Therefore, Gilgamesh suggests an exciting activity, which involves going to the forest to cut down trees to construct a memorable monument to the gods. However, since the terrifying demon called Humbaba is endowed with the responsibility of protecting the forest that is also prohibited to mortals, they have to kill him first.

At first, Enkidu disagrees with this proposal but gives in after persuasion from his friend. The importance of their friendship gave them the astounding courage and unwavering confidence to succeed in killing Humbaba. As the King of Uruk cleans himself, Ishtar offers to become his wife because his beauty was appealing to her; however, he turns her down with insults, recounting to her the dire fates that all her mortal lovers have met.

Ishtar, the goddess of love and beauty, is infuriated at the rejection and goes to heaven to request his father, Anu, to send the Bull of Heaven to terrorize the people of Uruk. However, Gilgamesh and his compatriot work together to defeat the bull sent by the gods from heaven.

For example, after the success of their missions, Enkidu dreamt that they had gone contrary to the wishes of the gods so much that one of them must be sacrificed for murdering Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Thereafter, he quickly succumbed to a fatal disease after twelve days of suffering.

The loss of Enkidu brings remorse to Gilgamesh, and he realizes that death is inevitable. Because of the loss of the great friendship, he sets out on a journey to find Utnapishtim, the one man holding the secret of everlasting life. On the way, he encountered various obstacles, and on finally meeting Utnapishtam, he successively failed different tests that could have given him the secret of immortality. In the end, Gilgamesh, though being the King of Uruk, succumbed to the same fate that befell his friend.

Although the type of friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu corresponds to contemporary friendship, it differs in some way from it. All through the ages, humans have treasured friendship since it determines our survival in this world.

In the current society, human relationship is essential for helping one another in times of difficulty, just as Gilgamesh and Enkidu assisted one another in conquering their enemies. Most people look for various traits in friends, mainly attributes that they may have in common. However, the current society takes friendship for granted. Many people see it as something that exists naturally.

How many yearn for their better halves, as did Gilgamesh and Enkidu for each other? Who can go in the world to search for a suitable mate in love? What does the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu tell us about friendship? The Mesopotamian society, as depicted by taming of Enkidu so that Gilgamesh could accept him, valued friendship such that they could go in search of it.

I do not think that two ordinary peasants in Mesopotamia were capable of forming the kind of bond that existed between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. For me, this is the most important thesis of the essay. Epic of Gilgamesh depicts its main hero as being a two-thirds god. Therefore, to make him have his equal, the gods created Enkidu to satisfy his cravings for a mate. That’s why Gilgamesh and Enkidu needed each other. This fact implies that the gods predestined their friendship, a thing that could not just happen among ordinary peasants in Mesopotamia.

Before the coming of Enkidu, Gilgamesh had a cold heart, and he never befriended anyone. However, the arrival of Enkidu changed all these as he placed a check on Gilgamesh’s powerful energies. On the other hand, Gilgamesh pulled him out of his egocentricity. This even matching of characteristics is only possible when someone is specially created for the other, but not otherwise as may be in ordinary men.

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IvyPanda. (2018, July 3). Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-theme-of-friendship/

"Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay." IvyPanda , 3 July 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-theme-of-friendship/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay'. 3 July.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay." July 3, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-theme-of-friendship/.

1. IvyPanda . "Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay." July 3, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-theme-of-friendship/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Gilgamesh and Enkidu Friendship Essay." July 3, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-epic-of-gilgamesh-theme-of-friendship/.

• DOI: 10.2307/606502
• Corpus ID: 55545556

The Development and Meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An Interpretive Essay

• Published 1 October 2001
• History, Philosophy
• Journal of the American Oriental Society

55 Citations

Going against the grain: an fpda of the epic of gilgamesh, enkidu and the harlot: another fragment of old babylonian gilgameš, suffering in the epic of gilgamesh, gilgamesh: the first tragic man, making a name for oneself: martial valor, heroic death, and procreation in the hebrew bible, the return of long-lost sumero-akkadian heritage and modern disorders: rediscovering gilgamesh, victorian tension, and aftermath, women and the interpretation of dreams in sumerian and akkadian literature, a mesopotamian notion of intelligence and creativity: the ingenious nature of enki/ea, esther in ancient jewish thought, the amorites and the bronze age near east, 327 references, slayers of moses, the: the emergence of rabbinic interpretation in modern literary theory, the great mother: an analysis of the archetype, literary theories in praxis, irony and the unity of the gilgamesh epic, narration in babylonian art, myths of enki, the crafty god, descent to the goddess: a way of initiation for women, renaissance self-fashioning from more to shakespeare, postmodernity and hermeneutics, the victorian frame of mind, 1830-1870, related papers.

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Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script.

by Alexandra Plakias   + BIO

A man knows he should speak up about the sexist behaviour of his coworkers, but doesn’t, because they’re his friends and he doesn’t want to make it awkward. A tenured professor is bothered by her colleague’s flirtatious remarks, but says nothing, because it would be awkward to bring it up. A person runs into a recently bereaved coworker, and wonders whether to address their loss, but doesn’t know what to say, so doesn’t mention it.

We often joke about awkwardness; it’s a staple of contemporary comedy. The exclamation ‘Awkward!’ functions as a light-hearted deflection, defusing social tension. The reality is heavier. Awkwardness can be funny, but it can also be serious – it inhibits our ability to act even when we know we should, and it can shut down or pre-empt conversations about important topics like menstruation, money, menopause, mortality. The desire to avoid awkwardness acts as a powerful social inhibition, preventing people from speaking up, and motivating compliance with problematic social and moral norms. So, which is it, then? Is awkwardness a funny, quirky, everyday occurrence, something we should learn to live with and even embrace? Is it a serious social inhibitor with negative implications for moral decision-making and social change? Or – in truly awkward fashion – might it be both?

It often seems that awkwardness is a personal problem. Indeed, one of the most surprising things I discovered while writing my book Awkwardness (2024) was just how many people self-identify as awkward – and how attached people become to this label. Movies and popular culture reinforce the idea of awkward people, typically portrayed as socially inept misfits who stick out and don’t fit in with trends or social norms. This focus on individuals suggests that the best way to avoid awkwardness is through silence and conformity – to imitate others, blend in, and say nothing.

But this is only part of the story, and it gets awkwardness wrong in important ways. Yes, awkwardness is caused by a failure to conform to existing social norms. But this failure isn’t individual and, rather than think in terms of awkward people, we ought to think in terms of awkward situations. And yes, awkwardness can be painful, and unpleasant. But it’s not embarrassing, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Contrary to popular belief, our awkward moments aren’t cringeworthy. Rather than cringing inwardly about them, we ought to examine them more closely. Because once we realise the true nature of awkwardness, we can stop seeing it as an individual failure and start seeing it as an opportunity for social change. In short: we should take awkwardness less personally, and more seriously.

W hat is awkwardness? This turns out to be a tricky question. Most of us know it when we see it (or experience it), but definitions are hard to come by. Partly that’s because empirical work on awkwardness tends to treat it as a type or symptom of embarrassment. But this is a mistake. Embarrassment happens when an individual commits a social gaffe; its characteristic facial and bodily expressions involve a kind of apology. Embarrassment is thus a kind of social repair. But awkwardness is different: it’s not something an individual causes, and it’s not something an individual can resolve on their own; it’s a social rupture. The failure involved in embarrassment is a failure to conform to existing norms. Awkwardness is different: it happens when we don’t have a social script to conform to. In other words, embarrassment happens when we violate socially prescribed scripts; awkwardness happens when we lack prescriptions to guide us.

People often feel like awkwardness is about them – that they are awkward, or not. But awkwardness is a collective production. More accurately, it’s a collective failure. Awkwardness is a kind of normative negative space, offering what Adam Kotsko calls ‘insight through breakdown’. It arises when people find themselves suddenly without a social script to guide them through an interaction or an event. The term ‘script’ carries associations of playacting, and that’s not a bad way to understand awkwardness. But the lesson of awkwardness is that, in the dramedy of life, we’re not just the actors, we’re the writers.

Is this a date, or a work dinner? When two people land on different answers: awkward!

The sociologist Erving Goffman recognised that social interaction is a kind of performance in which we occupy various roles. When a performance fails, the actor feels discredited – to use Goffman’s term, he loses ‘face’. Maybe he’s trying to play a role his audience won’t grant him (for example, a failed attempt to flirt, or a rejected marriage proposal) or he loses his composure and botches the performance. We usually perform one self at a time: our roles and our audiences are ‘ segregated ’, thereby preventing the kind of uncomfortable clash that can happen when, say, you run into your boss while out on a date, or have to talk about sex with your parents. But sometimes this clash is unavoidable, and things can get awkward. A character on the TV show My So-Called Life (1994-5) summed up the problem: ‘What I, like, dread is when people who know you in completely different ways end up in the same area. And you have to develop this, like, combination you on the spot.’

The ‘on the spot’ nature of social performance marks a disanalogy with theatre: unlike an actor memorising a script, the social scripts that guide everyday interactions are highly flexible and shift quickly, without explicit negotiation or reflection. A single person will play many roles in the course of a day, or even a single afternoon. In this sense, our interactions are more like social improvisation than scripted drama. And like improvisation, successful social interaction depends on a cooperative partner willing to go along with the scene.

The social cues by which we navigate the world range from the explicit – a dress code; the ‘no presents’ written on a party invitation – to the nearly imperceptible. Even where cues are explicit, there are often unspoken understandings in place: what counts as ‘black tie’ or ‘festive cocktail attire’? Is the request ‘no presents’ really to be taken literally, or is it merely a polite pretence that everyone will ignore? Slight changes in a conversational partner’s speech pattern; a gaze held just a little too long; a centimetre of physical distance – any of these can shift people’s understanding of the interaction taking place. Is this a date, or a work dinner? Are they about to hug, kiss or shake hands? When two people land on different answers: awkward!

A wkwardness thrives in uncertainty. This explains the link between awkwardness and silence: since silence can mean so many things, it makes it difficult to coordinate on and curate an interpretation of a situation. For example, is no one speaking up because no one else has a problem with the sexist comment someone just made? Or is everyone as uncomfortable as I am, but equally unsure how to act? Sometimes silence is acquiescence; other times, it’s a form of protest. In contrast to an explicitly voiced objection, the silence on an issue can be hard to read.

Indeed, awkwardness is fundamentally a kind of social disorientation. There’s a certain comfort in being able to socially situate oneself. That’s not to say that hierarchies are comfortable or beneficial for everyone – far from it. But even as social rejection and downranking hurt, there is a different kind of discomfort that comes along with being socially lost and disoriented, and this is the discomfort associated with awkwardness. This disorientation is built into the very etymology of the term: it derives from the Middle English ‘awk’, meaning ‘wrong’ or ‘clumsy’, and the English suffix ‘-ward’, denoting direction or orientation – yielding ‘facing the wrong way’. But just like passing someone on a road, facing the right way depends on knowing how things are done around here.

Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are

Knowing social scripts is one thing; truly internalising them is another. From the Italian sprezzatura to the French nonchalance to the Chinese concept of wu wei , various traditions have admired the ability ‘to practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort’, as the 16th-century Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione put it. By contrast, contemporary putdowns like ‘try-hard’ or ‘pick me’ show that it’s not enough to know the social script; its execution should look effortless.

This is one way awkwardness functions to distinguish insiders and outsiders. It’s also why we should be wary of labelling others ‘awkward’. This gets awkwardness wrong – it’s not a personality or character trait, but something that emerges from social interactions. Awkwardness requires the presence of others: individuals aren’t awkward, interactions are. This might seem surprising: people often describe themselves (or others) as ‘awkward’, and it seems that some people do have more difficulty navigating social interactions than others. But there are practical as well as theoretical reasons for resisting the idea that awkwardness is an individual trait. The label ‘awkward’ is not as innocuous as it seems: it’s ambiguous, and it obscures more than it reveals.

For example, suppose I describe my colleague Rob as ‘awkward at parties’. This is ambiguous: am I saying that he feels awkward at parties, or that he makes me feel awkward at parties? Or both? This ambiguity creates a dangerous space for bias or even ostracism: I may mistake my own discomfort at Rob’s presence for a property of Rob – projecting my own feelings of awkwardness on to him in a sort of pathetic fallacy. For example, suppose Rob is in a wheelchair, and I have little experience interacting with wheelchair users. I might feel some uncertainty about how to approach the situation, worrying about saying ‘the wrong thing’ or not knowing whether to stand or kneel while speaking with him. Using the term ‘awkward’ risks placing responsibility for my discomfort on to Rob. Not only is this fundamentally unfair, but it means that I’m less likely to try to remedy my ignorance – what arrangement would make Rob most comfortable? And since I’ve now classified Rob (in my own mind, if not to others) as ‘awkward’, I may be less likely to seek out interactions with him in the future. As the feminist scholar Sara Ahmed writes in The Promise of Happiness (2010): ‘To create awkwardness is to be read as being awkward. Maintaining public comfort requires that certain bodies “go along with it’’.’

W e can now begin to see how awkwardness becomes threatening, and how it can be weaponised, as Megan Garber has argued in The Atlantic . Because awkwardness is often aversive, those perceived as causing it risk ostracism. Changing social norms and rituals isn’t easy; adopting new ones can be costly. The person whose presence reveals the inadequacy of the status quo thus presents a threat. For example, in a department where the men routinely take clients to a strip club after dinner, or tell sexually explicit jokes in meetings, the presence of women colleagues might make things awkward, as they are forced to confront the clash between their workplace rituals and professional norms. One option would be to accept this conflict as of their own making, and adjust their behaviour accordingly. But too often, it’s the presence of the women that is blamed: now it’s awkward to tell those jokes, because there are women here. Blame falls on those perceived as different for ‘making’ things awkward. In many cases, though, it was awkward all along: that awkwardness was just being borne by someone else, as they tried to conform to others’ expectations.

Understood in these terms, awkwardness won’t necessarily become any less unpleasant to experience. But it’s worth paying more attention to when and where it arises, and be more willing to tackle it head-on. An unspoken expectation in many social interactions is that people already know how to navigate them. People avoid admitting social ignorance, and we are embarrassed by those who do, as if they’ve violated some unspoken social norm. But why should not knowing which pronoun, title or fork to use be any different from not knowing where the bathroom is, or what time the café opens? The reluctance to ask that social norms be made explicit reveals a deeper expectation: that social interaction should appear effortless. Awkwardness highlights the fact that our interactions are scripted. Its aversiveness shows the extent to which people prefer not to be reminded of this fact. And the lucky among us may not have to be.

We engage with physical infrastructure daily, often without thinking about it. That thoughtlessness is a privilege: when I walk into the lecture theatre and reach for the light switch, it’s more or less at arm’s reach, and I expect that to be the case in every room I walk into. Sometimes, the cord that pulls down the screen is a bit too high for me and I have to stand on a chair, and this is mildly annoying, embarrassing even. At that point I begin to feel irritated with the design of the room. I might wonder, who is it made for? Social scripts are like light switches and cords – we reach for them automatically, only really noticing their placement or existence when they’re not where we expect or need them to be. Of course, that’s not true for everyone. For many people, navigating the demands of daily life requires giving a good deal of thought to the placement of light switches, doorknobs and the like. For people who are neurodivergent, who struggle with reading facial cues, or who find themselves in unfamiliar social settings, the world is full of rooms with unpredictable, unreachable infrastructure. Awkwardness is a reminder that social infrastructure exists and that it is not equally accessible to everyone.

Because awkwardness is felt as a form of social discomfort, it doesn’t attach to everyone equally

The good news is that with effort and attention, social resources can be made more accessible. Awkwardness highlights where that work needs to happen. Understanding the social origins of awkwardness also helps reconceptualise it. Instead of thinking about it as a personal failure – a cringeworthy source of personal embarrassment, or shame – it can be recognised for what it is: the result of collective ignorance or absence.

And this is where the trope of the awkward misfit does a disservice. When awkwardness is understood as an individual failure to fit in, the response is supposed to be: do better; conform; learn the script. But that’s not always possible. Nor is it always desirable. In some cases, those norms are not serving everyone – or anyone. For example, many job interviews now eschew small talk and follow-up questions, following a scripted formula in which candidates are all asked the same questions with no follow-ups. This may feel awkward, especially for interviewers used to casual chit-chat. But that same chit-chat might unfairly skew the process by emphasising considerations of ‘fit’ and disadvantaging candidates who have less in common with interviewers. Professors may feel awkward asking students to share their pronouns, but this takes the burden of awkwardness off the students who might otherwise have had to jump in and correct people’s assumptions.

The upshot is that awkwardness isn’t something an individual should, or even can, fix on their own. To view awkwardness as shameful, or embarrassing, is therefore not just a philosophical mistake but a practical one: it is to miss out on an opportunity to repair the social infrastructure. Take the case of pronouns again: someone who finds it awkward to state their pronouns, but understands this awkwardness in terms of shame, might see the problem as stemming from a lack of courage or assertiveness, and feel bad about their failure to speak up. This puts the burden on them, going into new social or professional situations, to summon up the courage to change how they introduce themselves, which can make new interactions a source of stress or anxiety. If we understand awkwardness in terms of social scripts, things are different: the person might work with friends or colleagues to think about ways to build pronouns into introductions, or emails, or the structure of meetings.

But it’s important, too, to be mindful of who’s doing this work. Because awkwardness is felt as a form of social discomfort, it doesn’t attach to everyone equally. Social expectations of who does the work to make others feel comfortable – and correspondingly, who is held accountable when people feel uncomfortable – intersect with scripts around gender and social status. Women are often tasked with managing others’ moods and are expected to get along with others; this ‘emotional labour’ includes the work of repairing social interactions that become awkward. There’s a privilege in not worrying about others’ discomfort.

All of this might seem like a lot to put on a minor, everyday irritation. If we’re used to thinking of awkwardness as the kind of thing that crops up on bad dates, or a minor annoyance of office life, then what I’ve been saying so far might seem a bit overblown. Doesn’t everyone have awkward moments, and is it really such a big deal? The answer is that some of us have more awkward moments than others. And some awkward moments are a big deal: it matters that we have social scripts to talk about grief, or harassment, or race, because not talking about these topics erases an important part of people’s experiences. The silence associated with awkwardness can function to erase important parts of people’s experiences. But if we listen to it carefully, it can also tell us where more work is needed. The work of building our social infrastructure often goes unremarked upon. Awkwardness alerts us to the fact that our social norms are under construction. It’s an opportunity to examine the work that goes into our social lives, and why that work so often remains invisible.

In the drama of life, we don’t have to settle for being actors – we can be writers, too. Not everyone can afford to do this work. Not everyone’s contributions receive equal credit. But for those of us willing and able, awkward moments are an alert that our current social scripts are not working, and an opportunity to get to work writing better ones.

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