This is what I turned in as my analytical paper; I haven't gotten my grades back as of posting this though. I changed the title about eight times before leaving it with this one.

Pursuit of Immortality

Everyone changes. Everyone grows. Everyone ages. Everyone dies. Few people want to die though, and many seek ways to avoid it. The oldest known epic, Gilgamesh, centers on a man’s quest to escape death. Bram Stoker’s Dracula depicts a creature that survived its death to become a vampire. The villain in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter sacrifices his soul to gain something like immortality. Gilgamesh also includes a man who becomes an immortal god. Captain Jack from the BBC’s Doctor Who cannot die after regaining his life once. But however much we try, humans cannot achieve immortality, and faking it to avoid dying corrupts our humanity.

Immortality means to live forever. It could indicate literal, everlasting life; or something more symbolic, such as living on through one’s work. It could also be an inaccurate label given to one who survives death once but can die again, such as a vampire. These beings are not immortal; they just live an unnaturally long time. Many characters who claim immortality actually only possess this ‘unnatural longevity.’ They cannot become immortal because to do so, they would have to eradicate all aspects of their humanity, but that power is beyond them.

Unnatural life, whether in its nature or simply its amount, automatically makes one somehow inhuman. When Gilgamesh is two-thirds divine, and only one-third human, the priestess Shamhat describes him as “so full of life-force that he needs no sleep” (Mitchell 82). The king stands below the gods, but above humanity; his life-force, the opposite of the force of death and the greatest weapon against it, both proves and causes his more divine than human nature. Gilgamesh befriends Enkidu and eventually sets off to kill Humbaba, but the king sleeps repeatedly while they travel. His friendship humanized Gilgamesh by reducing his ‘life-force’ because humans lose life; we die.

When Enkidu dies, it frightens Gilgamesh and drives him to escape his own end. Fear of death drives him, not a desire to gain life, which he believes he already has. Gilgamesh finds Utnapishtim, who charges the king with a task he might once have accomplished: “Prevail against sleep/ and perhaps you will prevail against death.”(Mitchell 191). Gilgamesh falls asleep because he’s only human—a great man and son of a goddess, but still human—and no man can live forever, especially when he’s actually running from death instead of towards life. After reaching the ends of the Earth and finding the only man to become immortal, Gilgamesh returns home without his escape from death. The journey, however, teaches him that all men die and he should live as a great king without regrets.

Sometimes, avoiding death just once makes one seem or feel immortal. Count Dracula was born human and died but lived on as a vampire. Since he survived death once, Dracula claims the right to call himself ‘immortal.’ Vampirism also eliminates all risk of dying due to old age or disease, so Dracula conquers a few specific causes of death. A handful of avoidances do not provide a complete victory and everlasting life though: as the sun sets at the end of Stoker’s novel, Dracula dies. His original humanity prevents Dracula from ever becoming immortal. He is simply unusually resilient and long lasting.

Even though immortality rests beyond his reach, Dracula finds an imitation of it. His imitation changes Dracula into a vampire, an inhuman monster. Lucy Westenra’s substantial transformations after death—physical, mental, and emotional—show that a vampire retains nothing of her former self, except the corpse. This chasm between living humans and undead vampires shows itself in even the transfer of blood. Dracula drinks Lucy’s blood to nourish himself. The human characters, however, participate in blood transfusions to keep her alive. People give blood; vampires take it. Dracula’s death also portrays the extent of his transformation and the mortal limitations that linger on despite his distorted humanity. Rather than leaving a solid corpse, as humans naturally do, Dracula dies and “crumbled into dust” (Stoker 378). Vampirism, Dracula’s imitation immortality, corrupts his body and mind and changes him into something with only the barest shreds of humanity. Even shreds though, are enough to indicate death.

Some characters strive so desperately to evade death that they simply do not care about their methods or the reality of their immortality. Lord Voldemort employs Horcruxes—objects holding pieces of his soul—to avoid dying. But Professor Slughorn describes this as “an act of violation, it is against nature” because in nature, humans are mortal and their souls intact, not mutilated to hide from death (Rowling Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 498). Splitting his soul keeps Voldemort alive so long as the Horcruxes remain intact. It provides the illusion of immortality while only prolonging his life for a limited time.

Voldemort’s limited time still increases the amount of his ‘life-force.’ Dumbledore notices that “Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years” (Rowling Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 502). In extending his life through such unnatural means, Voldemort makes himself inhuman. His fake immortality tears his soul to shreds until he becomes “less than a spirit, less than the meanest ghost. . .” (Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 653). The lie he presents as eternal life corrodes, cracks, and shatters his soul as he ignores its falsehood. Despite this, it lets him survive without his body as a formless almost-ghost, as sure a sign of inhumanity as his incorporeal existence. The desire to transcend death drives him to ignore everything else and corrupts him beyond recognition.

Not everyone fails to find the immortality. Some people never look, and others receive a gift of eternal life. Gilgamesh finds a man, Utnapishtim, who the gods made immortal, despite his human birth. When Enlil grants Utnapishtim immortality, he says that “Utnapishtim was a mortal man. / But from now on, he and his wife shall be / gods like us. . . ” (Mitchell 190-191). His humanity no longer ties Utnapishtim to mortality because the gods possess the power to make him a god and eliminate his human shortcomings. The gods also choose his home and place him far from where most mortal men can tread. Dracula and Voldemort want freedom to walk where and kill whom they want, but Utnapishtim accepts the gods’ constraints. He lives eternally with his wife, not alone as Gilgamesh and Voldemort attempted. Since he lives as a god with a loved one, Utnapishtim stands little risk of corruption. Gods transcend mortality, so Utnapishtim and his wife attain true immortality and never rely on corrupting imitations.

Few men become gods, but great power can still grant the others life. Rose Tyler brings Captain Jack Harkness back to life in the British television show Doctor Who with the power inside a living, time-traveling ship called the Tardis. Afterwards, Jack can not die; every time he should, he loses consciousness and wakes up a few minutes later. Before Rose revives him, Jack prepares to die and takes it as a matter of fact that he will. Since he never looks for it, Captain Jack never sinks to false methods to survive a death or two, as Voldemort does. Despite being an unsought gift, Jack’s immortality differs from what most seek because he does not stop aging, even if he does so slowly. He might even age and change so much that he eventually becomes a being called the Face of Boe, who dies, which would make even Jack’s life less than immortal (the creators have not confirmed or denied this theory, first presented in “The Last of the Time Lords”). Jack’s unsought inability to die can not corrupt or destroy him because he never sinks to ‘evil’ means and remains focused on doing ‘good’ and helping people.

While characters seek, and even gain, immortality in all of these examples, they often merely run from death and dehumanize themselves. Gilgamesh actually loses life to become human. Dracula and Lucy live longer through becoming undead, blood-sucking monsters. Voldemort becomes something less than even an errant spirit by shattering his soul to pieces. Utnapishtim becomes an immortal god, no longer human. Jack may not even live forever. Whether the characters learn it, as Gilgamesh does, or not, no man can live forever, and dreams of immortality corrupt men into accepting short-lived and destructive means to avoid death.

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