Different Views of Contrastive Structure of Signs in Ermia

“Binary oppositions” are resulted from Saussure’s doctrines and indicates that the work’s intellectual totality is based on opposite pairs. Pairs including “black/white”, “truth/lie”, and “poor/rich”. Binary oppositions are seen within the substrates of the phenomena such as language, society, thought, behavior, and culture; makes them meaningful and generates communicational gateways, forming sign systems and special patterns. Binaries are effective in code organizing and highlighting the signs. “Ermia” the first novel written by Reza Amirkhani, is the description of a warrior’s mental challenges in matching teachings of the holy defense (Iran-Iraq War) with some facts of Iranian society after the security council resolution 598 that led to ceasefire and the people who were involved. The trace of binary appositions and its practical elegance are appreciated in the configuration of novel’s incidents. The present research applying a descriptive-analytical method, first of all explains three sets of codes associating with novel’s conflicting thoughts in order to access the hidden layers of text, then categorizes, decodes, and analyzes binary oppositions in two categories of “personalities” (Mostafa/Ermia, Ermia’s family/Ermia, Moammar/Ermia, Shahin/Ermia, Mostafa/other friends, the families away from war/the families involved in war, Kavoos/Ermia, Ermia in the past/Ermia of today) and “places” (the front/the city, north of city/south of city, Ermia’s trench/Ermia’s home, front/university, city/rock quarry) and finally explains the consequences of oppositional relations of signs within the formation of three viewpoints: “passive”, “responsible”, and “concerned”.