The structural study of Myth by Levi-Strauss

     Levi-Strauss is a sociologist, anthropologist and structuralists. As a structuralists, he sees structure in everything. In this essay he basically takes about structure of myth. He says that myth has internal and external structure. Regarding the myth there are different opinions. Sociologists say that a society expresses itself in the form of myth. A myth represents a given society. For psychoanalysis’s, myth represents the repressed feelings or suppressed desires. A man does have the desires and those desires may or may not be fulfilled. Those unfulfilled desires remain in unconscious state. And those unconscious desires get outlet in the form of myth. Oedipal myth for Freud represents the human desire for killing father and marrying with mother, generally people have the understanding that. Myth is random and unsystematic as having no logical connection at all. But Levi-Strauss does not agree with that concept and takes his standpoint by saying that myth is structured. He says that if myth is unsystematic then why the myth collected form different parts of the world seem quite similar in nature? It is simply because myths are similar in nature and internal structure. In the essay, Levi-Strauss takes about myth and poetry. Myth and poetry both can be translated. Myth survives even after its worst translation but the poetry can not. Success of myth lies in the stay and content it has whereas success of poetry lies in the technique it has so poetry looses its identity between them is that both of them use language but myth has more intimate relationship with language than poetry. Let us discuss about the relationship between the language and the myth. Like language, myth has got structure and system. For sassure, language is synchronic and dichronic. Diachronic studies language in terms of history, it studies the historical development of language. But synchronic studies the present condition of the language. So language is related to both past and present. Myth is also related to both past and present but more than this it is related to future as well. Myth keeps on giving instructions the people even in upcoming days.
     Like language myth also contains language and parole. In language, language is the internal structure, it is abstract and it is not seen, whereas parole is what we utter, it is conerete and it can be seem as it is a outward manifestation of the language. We read myth or stay that is parole (outward manifestation of myth) and beneath this outward manifestation there is a language (structure aspect of myth).
     Language contains syntaxes, morphemes and phonemes. The smallest part of languages is called phoneme. Phoneme can not give meaning alone. It gives meaning only when it is combined with other phonemes. For example d,o, g, do not give meaning alone but when these phonemes combine are bound by the bundle of relations and it is this relation that gives meaning. Similarly, myth also does have its constituents. The smallest unit of myth is called mythem. There mythems do not give meaning alone. They give meaning only when they combine with other mythems. The mythem is a sentence with a single verb. Mythems break the whole myth into mythemes. Mythems are basic units of how we measure and analyze myths. For example, ‘Oedipus marries his mother’ or ‘Antigone burries her brother’ can be called mythemes.
     In any myth, there are different mythemes and they are in jumble like 9,0,1,3,5,2,8,7,5,0,6,9,3,2,3,8,6,7 etc. and our function is put them in order. Like all 1’5, 2’5, 3’5, 9’5 together Levi-Strauss have has shown the arrangements of oedipal-myth which is mentioned below.
Oedipus marries his mother, jocaste
Antigone burries her brother polynices despite prohibition.
Cadmos seeks his sister Europe ravished by Zeus.
Overrating of blood relations.
Oedipus kills his father Laios.
Eteocles kills his brother polynices.
The spartol kill one another.
Underrating of blood relations. Cadmos kills the dragon
Oedipus kills the sphinx

Killing of evil force.

Binary opposition in language-Binary opposition in myth.
Underrating and overrating the blood relations.
Killing of man vs, killing of evil force.
     There are similarities between these different mythemes. They are bound by the relation of similarity. All the relations belonging to the same column exhibit one common feature which is our project to discover. In column I, there is similarity in overrating of blood relationship. Here blood relations are overemphasized. In the second column, the blood relationship is underrated the killing of their own relatives. The genuine human relationship is severely shattered. Similarly, in column III, killing of evil forces are shown. Thus it is proved that myth is composed with different mythemes as having internal structural and outward manifestation. Moreover, myth is not random and unsystematic rather it is systematic, structured and spontaneous unlike general understanding.

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