Binary Opposites in Amish Tripathi’s The Immortals of Meluha (2010)

Claude - Levi Strauss’s binary opposition is the base for literary criticism and analysis of world mythology. Strauss’s contribution came after analyzing many world mythologies to find a common structure; binary oppositions was one of his groundbreaking contributions. The problem of the research lies in not investing in binary oppositions when analyzing modern representation of world mythology as well as not following a clear methodology. The research aims at applying a method of identifying as well as classifying binary oppositions in modern novels based on world mythologies. The researchers selected Amish Tripathi’s The Immortal Of Meluha as a modern representation of Hindu mythology so as to identify binary oppositions and classify them into three types. The first category is existence vs nonexistence, which refers to opposites where the existence of one annihilates the existence of the other; the second is coexistence in which the binary oppositions coexist together and complement each other, or they define each other. Finally, the last type is associations, where the binary oppositions are only identified by their association to the cultural, religious, and societal frame of mind of that specific mythology. After the analysis of the novel, the researchers concluded that following this classification facilitates not only identifying binary oppositions, but also makes analysis more accurate. The researchers recommended applying this classification to other modern novels based on world mythologies.