The Application of Structuralism Theory on Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

THE APPLICATION OF STRUCTURALISM THEORY ON PRATCHETT’S THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS

Introduction

In analysing any literary works, structuralism is one of the linguistics theories that is often used by the readers. The structuralism theory has been applied actively in all field theories of sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and literature for years. The theory of structuralism was introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure who was known as “father of modern linguistics” in the first half of the twentieth century. Taghzideh mentioned in his article that structuralism helps the readers in analysing literary works as it functions as an innovative ground for the analysis (1). The concept and sign that can be found in any literary form can be understood better by using structuralism as it will help the readers in generating a new idea of the works by understanding the underlying meanings of the context.

A theory is like a foundation form by its principles. As has been proposed by Saussure, structuralism consists of several main principles that strengthen the theory. As Barry highlighted in his book, the principle consists of meaning is arbitrary, meaning is relational, language constitutes our world,  binary opposition, and langue and parole (36-38). However, only some of the principles will be discussed further in analysing The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents talks about the story of the talking cat, Maurice who leads a group of educated rats moving from to town to town pretending to be a plague so that they can earn money. Their scheme manages to succeed with the help of the boy piper, Keith. They continue with their plan to deceive the people of the town for the last time until the unexpected event takes place which is the encounter with the rat catchers. They work together to handle the problem with many challenges along the way.

This paper will analyse the story entitled The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents written by Terry Pratchett using the several principles of structuralism approach which are; meaning is arbitrary, binary opposition, and langue and parole and how these principles help the readers in understanding the story.  In analysing the text,  we place our focus on the overall context of the text without specifying any chapters because a text is better comprehended when scrutinizing as a whole.

Arbitrary

First and foremost, the meaning is arbitrary and is one of the structuralism principles that can be applied in the story of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. As what has been introduced behind the definition of meaning is arbitrary, a word cannot be defined in isolation and understood separately. It promotes the idea that the meaning of a word is unfixed and unstable and it depends on the context of the text that is being referred to at the moment. In other words, there is no significant relationship between the word and what it means (Barry 41).

The main characters in the book, Maurice the cat and the rats are being portrayed as looking and understanding things differently. It is on the ground that they look at it based on their knowledge. In short, they viewed and perceived the world differently due to the reasons that they have their own beliefs and understanding. As they have their own interpretation of meaning, readers might find it difficult to comprehend the text if they do not share the same understanding. To illustrate, it can be seen through the name of the talking rats that were being mentioned in the books. Each of them has their own names such as Peaches, Darktan, Nourishing, Dangerous Beans, Sardines, Hamnpork, and Donut Enter. If the readers look at these names without understanding the context of the story, they would think all of the names mentioned above are referring to the name of food and animals. However, it actually refers to the name of the rats' character in the book (Pratchett 20).

In the book, Malicia misunderstood Keith when he mentioned Sardines because she continuously thought that Sardines was referring to the name of the food (Sardine as a type of fish), while in fact, it is the name of one of the rats. In addition, it is also supported by the sentences uttered by Malicia, "Sardines hardly ever invade a kitchen." From that phrase, the readers can see Malicia was perceiving merely the literal meaning of the name when she implied the meaning of the word Sardines to the Sardine fish, and not a rat. It clearly shows that it is hard for her to believe that Sardine fish can take over a kitchen because based on her common knowledge and understanding, it is kind of contradictory with the characteristics of Sardine fish. It is supported by Hawkes in his book mentioning that since arbitrary is a concept that is self-contained, there is no natural relationship between the sign and the concept underlying behind it (12). 

Other than that, the terms signifier and signified are also commonly related to meaning is arbitrary because it emphasizes on the unfixed meaning of a word based on a different interpretation.  Duan mentioned in his article that the concept of linguistic sign and arbitrariness can be applied if people have a deep understanding of it. Besides, as stated by Saussure, signifier refers to the physical existence of a thing while on the other hand, signified is more to the mental concept of the object or thing (54).

A word can be arbitrary depending on the knowledge of the readers because each individual possessed a different interpretation. For example, the usage of the word ‘dump’ and ‘spider’  in the book can be analysed using the signifier and signified concept. Both of the words are being interpreted differently instead of their literal meaning. Usually, people will associate dump with trash or garbage, but for Maurice, the word dump is referring to lunch (or food) and home for the rats (Pratchett 5). It is on the ground that the rats lived at the dump located behind the university of wizards and got their own names after eating the dump there. However, for the rats, the dump is considered as a magical food because they are able to talk and become educated rodents after eating the dump as claimed by Maurice (Pratchett 45). Other than that, the word ‘spider’ was being interpreted as a rat. When the Spider finally revealed himself to Maurice, Maurice literally thought of him as a normal spider (Pratchett 51).  However, Spider here apparently implied to the rat king as mentioned on page 71. Thus, it shows that the arbitrariness of language has its range of meaning and the meaning would depend on your understanding of the context or situation you are talking at the moment. That is why language or words do not have a natural meaning, it will be different once you understand the context.

Binary Opposition

Binary opposition is a vital concept of structuralism. It is a pair of related concepts or terms which differ in meanings, such as tall and short, big and small, hot and cold, and good and evil. Other than Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss is also one of the scholars who contributed greatly to structuralist thinking. He was the one who came up with the theory of binary opposition or also known as dyadic pairs (Dobie 155). Binary opposition is a theory of sociology, anthropology, and linguistics. In cultural studies, we often find binary opposition when exploring relationships among different groups of people such as the poor and the rich, or disabled and non-disabled people (Binary Opposition in Literature: Definition & Examples). Besides, we can also see in literary forms such as books and films, they contain opposing main characters like the protagonist and antagonist, short and tall, and female and male. We can also see the two contradictory elements in the book, for example, rat versus cat, and human versus animal such as Maurice versus Sardines, and Keith versus Peaches respectively.

The meaning of binary opposition in this paper is two contrasting concepts, in which there is dualistic opposition, which allows the readers to understand the dynamic process in literary works. The concept of binary opposition is covered by two elements, which are the protagonist and the antagonist. In the book, they are the Clan, which consists of the educated rodents, and the rat catchers, respectively. Readers can distinguish between main characters and supporting characters based on the function of characters in the story. A character that holds the leadership role or dominating the whole story is called the main character or protagonist (Gyem 169).

The protagonist always becomes the focus of the story. Based on this, it can be concluded that the protagonist of the book is the Clan, which is a group of sentient rodents such as Dangerous Beans, Darktan, Sardines, and Nourishing. The Clan is illustrated as having a righteous plan. From the beginning, the Clan had a plan to build rat civilization and live in harmony with humans based on the children’s book Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure. The Clan had no ill-intention towards the human even though the latter always found a way to dispose of them. When Malicia and Keith were kidnapped by the rat catchers, Dangerous Beans and Peaches went to rescue them although they knew they were at risk of getting killed. However, although the Clan was not entirely harmonious, they opposed Maurice's idea to scam money out of townspeople. From these, the protagonist is almost always having good intentions, contradicting the bad elements.

The antagonist represents the evil or the chief of villains. The rat catchers are the troublemakers in the book and their image are illustrated as unmerciful. At the beginning of the book, the rat-catchers kept spreading the lies that rats carry a plague that makes townspeople’s legs fall off and using bootlaces as fake rat tails, making people believe that they actually caught the rats when it was not. The truth was the rat-catchers kept the rats for coursing. Coursing is a type of sport of hunting game animals such as hares with greyhounds but in this case, it was rats with dogs. In the book, the rat-catchers kidnapped Hamnpork for coursing and he was severely injured in the coursing ring. This kind of so-called sport, making the prey suffer is frowned upon as it is considered as unethical and cruel. Besides that, they created a figure of Spider, a powerful “rat king” who is made up of eight rats tied together and he can control the minds of other rats and it is frightening due to his evil minds. The personality of the rat-catchers was not changing from the beginning until the end who were always mischievous and evil because of their bad deeds. From these characters, it implicitly illustrates that there is a clear gap between the two parties, the protagonists who are always contradictory to the antagonists, in their ways of thinking and the way they act. The radical contradiction is crisply shown and it is called as binary oppositional.

The next application of binary opposition is human versus animal. The author pointed out that the notion of human superiority over animals has evolved. The rats that humans considered as lowly vermin are not portrayed like that in the book. Maurice is illustrated as having no feline state, and the changelings are sentient and intelligent. The animals in the book considered the humans inferior over the animals. This can be seen when Dangerous Beans confronted Spider, he agreed with Spider that humanity is the race that spreads disease and is obnoxious. Maurice also pointed out that humans love fighting with each other and are not intelligent. Therefore, from these examples, the readers can fathom the existence of animals from the contradictory of affairs between humans versus animals. 

Langue and Parole

Langue and Parole are known to be one of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic theories in structuralism. Langue is the system of language that allows an individual to speak because langue is the abstract knowledge that a speaker knows about the language (Nordquist). It is also stated that langue operates at all levels such as semantic, syntactic and phonological level. On the other hand, parole is specified to how an individual personally uses the language whether spoken or written (N. Molawane and Pratap Ramdas 2). Hence, langue plays a big role as it also determines the parole of a certain focus. Al-Qunayeer et al., explained that langue contains the national language’s vocabulary and system while parole is the personal execution of language orally and written by an individual (407). 

Langue and parole are interdependent on each other. Langue may imply parole, but, parole is the source of development for langue. Parole refers to the actual performance of a speaker and it shows the user's linguistic behaviour. Parole is also a product of langue in different versions. Hence, langue and parole are interdependent and are important in structuralism. One of the most common examples in langue and parole that is used in the language is the system of the language used in langue is almost similar between all languages while the different uses of language such as French, Tamil or English is the parole of langue. Therefore, langue extends to various fields that uphold a system of language as it holds an inventory of distinctions whereas parole is the subtopic of langue such as the account of language that develops a combination of forms in speech (Culler 33).

In the story of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, there are a few excerpts found to have characteristics of langue and parole. Since langue refers to the main genre or category and parole is the type of genre that falls into langue, thus, referring to this context, the type of characters are categorized into langue while the characters’ names themselves are the parole. To illustrate, the clan of sentient rodents that Maurice engage with is the langue, while the names of the rodents themselves which were given based on the left food or wasted food from the trash bags are the parole such as Hamnpork, Peaches, Dangerous Beans, Additives, Nourishing and Sardines. All of them shared the same characteristic in which they are able to talk even though they are animals.

Apart from that, langue and parole can also be displayed in the form of power and strength. The things that have been done by Maurice and the rat-catchers to gain something can be considered as parole of manipulative skills. The cunning act of manipulation done by Maurice and the rat-catchers can be seen throughout the story in which they deceive people in the town. To illustrate, Maurice has successfully tricked and manipulated the clan to do the scheme for the last time though they refused to do it at first. Maurice insisted it for the sake of their benefits but, actually it was for his interest and profit (Pratchett 6). Meanwhile, the people of Bad Blintz town have been manipulated by the rat-catchers by blindly believing that they will solve the problem caused by rat plague, where in fact it was their plan all along to get money.

Moreover, langue and parole could also be seen in terms of leadership, which is the ‘langue’, and how people are behaving, in a way that falls under it, either leader or followers, and that is ‘parole’. This could be analysed from the way Maurice was behaving as if he was the main leader ‘parole’, while the rat clan including Hamnpork, Peaches, Dangerous Beans, Additives, Nourishing and Sardines, were acting as his followers ‘parole’ in the rat kingdom. Other than that, the position held by the mayor also shows a sign of leadership since being the head of the town often associated with having more power. The rat-catchers felt intimidated after they knew that Malicia is the mayor’s daughter (40). Thus, it shows that they were scared to do anything bad to her out of respect for her father though they were the villain.

Last but not least, Terry Pratchett, the author of this book upholds a theme on his literary works which is the theme of ‘magic and adventure’. Terry Pratchett came up with a series of Discworld from the year 1983 to 2015 which is a parody and fantasy genre for readers including kids and adults (Fabien). This theme can be considered as the ‘langue’ which focuses on a certain genre and theme. An example of his literary works includes the Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents which is the 38th book when it is read in an order according to the series. This book is an example of a ‘parole’, along with his other literary works such as  ‘The Colour of Magic’, ‘Light of fantastic’, ‘Equal rites’, ‘Morte’ as well as the other 37 books that come along with this particular series of Discworld. Hence, literary works written by an author could be a ‘parole’ of a specified theme and series which is the ‘langue’ that an author creates.

Conclusion

To conclude, the analysis of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett monologue, was in-depth by applying the theory of structuralism in a compact, yet it was also in comprehensive details in terms of arbitrary, binary oppositions as well as langue and parole. Using the arbitrary approach, it was applicable to perceive the concept of how meaning should not be alone, which could cause indifferentness depending on the background of the readers’ mind as well as the idea of how the perfect world and the flawed world differs for everyone else.

By applying the approach of binary oppositions, the analysis could then go further to understand the dynamic process between the characters, and how the perfect world and flawed world could work, those who believe in unity and those who do not as well, as mentioned in the novel. By applying this approach, the readers can understand “villain” by the work of “hero” when reading any literary works. Besides, the concept of binary opposition has existed since the very first day the world was created. The concept of “binary opposites” in Islamic perspective can be seen in the creation of prophet Adam (A.A.S) and Hawa. This is the best example which is embodied in the Quran, Surah Al-Hujurat verse 13: “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another”.

Last but not least, the approach of langue and parole has been applied to show the variety in analysing any content using structuralism, since they look at them in a different angle, especially in terms of categorising the contents and the elements, which helped to get into the depth of the novel The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, since the text showed collaboration between langue and parole. Hence, it shows that structuralism theory helps the readers in understanding the text better since it acts as a system that highlights the underlying structures in the text.

Works Cited

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ENGL 4620 – Literary Criticism

Sem. 2, 2019/2020

Section: 1

Name of Lecturer: Miss Nurul Fateha

Group 1

Soraya Hanis binti Ahmad Pauzi (1614974)

Sara Ayman Mahmoud Hendawy (1610056)

Fatin Ulfah binti Hasim (1620040)

Karimal Hilal binti Abdullah (1622298)

Nur Syarah binti Abdullah (1623686)