We remember from the prologue that the walls of the city, made from the cedar taken from the forest, still stand in actuality or in imagination to proclaim Gilgamesh's fame, and the very first sentence of the epic attests to the immortality of his name. But the immortality of a name is less the ability to live forever than the inability to die. From its beginnings, Enkidu's story raises many questions on the nature of man. He lives in joy with the beasts until a trapper sees that Enkidu is destroying the traps and helping the beasts escape. The trapper needs to tame Enkidu just as the people of Uruk need to tame Gilgamesh, or to redirect his desires.
Civilization is less a thing than a process, the transformation of the primitive.
Without the primitive, civilization would cease to exist. What Enkidu gains is wisdom. Enkidu is seduced by the harlot and then rejected by the beasts. This seems a dirty trick. Recognizing the corruption in himself, civilized man corrupts primitive man to weaken him and make him one of his own.