In The Epic of Gilgamesh, how can the tragedy of mortality be discussed?

The entire text is
consumed with the
search of Gilgamesh for immortality. He is a larger than life character who
is
obsessed with not dying, and who endangers his own life happily in the
hope of gaining
immortality. In the end, Gilgamesh is a character who does
not gain immortality but learns
wisdom, and part of the wisdom that he learns
is the acceptance of mortality, but this is a
lesson that is hard to learn
and it is one that Gilgamesh has to personally confront when his
friend and
erstwhile sidekick, Enkidu, dies. Note how Gilgamesh grieves his friend's

death:

The paths going up to and down
from the
forest of cedars
All mourn you: the weeping does not end
day or night.

Gilgamesh has to realise
that all men, including himself, die at
some point in their lives, and that
the only response in the face of such mortality is to live
life as happily
and merrily as one is able to, as he learns from Siduri, the goddess of

wine-making. Theof mortality is thus expressed in the way that Gilgamesh sets out at
the
beginning of this epic classic to gain immortality but is forced to
confront the mortality of
man through the death of his best friend and his
own mortality, moving towards an acceptance of
his own state as a thoroughly
mortal being.