Deconstruction of myth in The Purpose

Assignment: Paper No. - 04

Name: Patel kavita

Topic: Deconstruction of myth in The Purpose

Roll No. – 11

Semester: III

Batch: 2011- 12

Deconstruction of myth in The Purpose

First of all, let’s throw a glance on two terms, myth and deconstruction.

            Myth :

In classical Greek, "mythos" signified any story or plot, whether true or invented. In its central modern significance, however, a myth is one story in a mythology—a system of hereditary stories of ancient origin which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group, and which served to explain why the world is as it is and things happen as they do, to provide a rationale for social customs and observances, and to establish the sanctions for the rules by which people conduct their lives. Most myths are related to social rituals—set forms and procedures in sacred ceremonies—but anthropologists disagree as to whether rituals generated myths or myths generated rituals

         Deconstruction :

As applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to "subvert" or "undermine" the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a literary text. Typically, a deconstructive reading sets out to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dissipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite array of incompatible and undecidable possibilities. The consequence, in Derrida's view, is that we can never, in any instance of speech or writing, have a demonstrably fixed and decidable present meaning. He says that the differential play (jeu) of language may produce the "effects" of decidable meanings in an utterance or text, but asserts that these are merely effects and lack a ground that would justify certainty in interpretation. To Derrida's view, then, it is difference that makes possible the meaning whose possibility it necessarily baffles. As Derrida says in another of his coinages, the meaning of any spoken or written utterance, by the action of opposing internal linguistic forces, is ineluctably disseminated—a term which includes, among its deliberately contradictory significations, that of having an effect of meaning, of dispersing meanings among innumerable alternatives, and of negating any specific meaning. There is thus no ground, in the incessant play of difference that constitutes any language, for attributing a decidable meaning, or even a finite set of determinately multiple meanings, to any utterance that we speak or write.  Derrida's characteristic way of proceeding is not to lay out his deconstructive concepts and operations in a systematic exposition, but to allow them to emerge in a sequence of exemplary close readings of passages from writings that range from Plato through Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the present era—writings that, by standard classification, are mainly philosophical, although occasionally literary. He describes his procedure as a "double reading." Initially, that is, he interprets a text as, in the standard fashion, "lisible" (readable or intelligible), since it engenders "effects" of having determinate meanings.

T. P. Kailasam will always be remembering as the father of modern kanada play, the man of genius whose plays are revolutionary. The kanada stories by their refreshing realism and modernity and free it once from the literary unrealities that possessed it.

                       Kailasam’s interest in the epics was a result of his life long search for greatness in the world of man. The search for greatness in human nature says shree D.V. Gundappa was a natural indignation in Kailasam. It was his greatest desire to be able to see the inner strength of heroes like Bhishma, Drona, Eklavya and Karan. He saw likewise in the Tavarekere group of stories, the greatness hidden in the common man Kailasam would often deliberately create around himself the atmosphere of drabness and dirt so that he could see the pure and the beautiful even better. One must become; he used to say a guttersnipe. He should sit there and gaze at the sky and the sun, and the world around him.

At the center of each of his plays in an epic hero who emerges much greater and more flawless than in an original myth. The Purpose play in two acts is about Eklavya, the great Nishada, youth, whose devotion to his Wolf-infested forest. Eklavya’s tragedy arises out of the conflict between those two loyalties of his and the consequent betrayal of his ‘purpose’ (the destruction of the wolves) to which he is led by his noble act of sacrifice to preserve the honour of his guru, an act of which renders him impotent against the wild beast.

In this two act play the writer, Kailasam Deconstruct the myth which is there in original Mahabharata. In the play, here the Eklavya is main character or protagonist in play; while in Mahabharata Arjuna is main character. The inspiration behind all these plays is invariably the greatness of a hero – Eklavya, Karna, Krishna etc.

This exercise demanded on perceptions of the conception of myth itself as also of Kailasam’s plays. We also noticed various factors involved in the transmission of myth, which assumed concrete shapes within disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, philosophy and most of all, the literary world.

 In the Play, Kailasam draws Eklavya, with marginalized character as modern alternative or exemplar for reshaping society, this dissertation has discovered more topics for the study. One of them is the construction of women especially as mothers, in the lives of these heroes. The concept of motherhood for most nationalist writers were associated with the crucial role of procreating and rearing a special breed of man the role extended, to the man folk to reconstruct the motherland. Thus, central principle of structure in the purpose is the contrast between two kinds of purpose. The righteous symbolized by Eklavya and the pursuit of personal  ambition as seen in partha, the question of Purpose looms large in Karma as well.