The Good Behind the Clouds of Sin

While thinking about Gilamesh and the interesting hero he is, I stumbled on a thought of a similar character from a category of story-telling I normally wouldn't reference: A video game. In Prototype, a game released on the Play Station 3 and X-Box 360 earlier this year, a man named Alex Mercer helps create a human-enhancing virus that goes wrong. After news of the virus is spread to the public, the scientist responcible for the public outburst, Mercer, is ordered to be executed. In his defense, Mercer steals a vial of the virus and threatens to unleash it upon the city if anyone attepts to subdue him. His pursuers do not restrain and Mercer drops the vial as he is shot to death. However the virus flows into his bloodstream, and essentially heals him. However, when he wakes up he notices he has super strength and has the ability to shift his body into many different shapes. In retrospect, the game is about Mercer fending off all the infected people the virus gets to in the city and seeing himslef turn into a true hero. Now Gilgamesh didn't unleash a virus on his people of Uruk, but he did treat them arbitrarily and have unconsensual sex with mass amounts of women. Gilgamesh and Alex Mercer are both heroes, and although they both did bad things of different magnitudes, they both appear to me as flawed heroes, and in the end, they both come to find peace and improve their qualities as people. Gilgamesh went on a long journey that involved fighting a demon and overcoming the loss of a true friend. Through that journey he came to find himself. Alex Mercer came to find himself through fighting off the havoc he caused in the city, and becoming a protector rather than destroyer. I believe the flawed hero is always the most interesting because one can relate to him or her. It seems to me that we all have a hero inside of us waiting to get out and do some good, but many times the good is outmatched by the clouds of sin we are born with.