Levi-Strauss is interested in the Zuni origin myth because it raises an important and vexing theoretical question: What do we do when there are multiple versions of a myth--especially when the versions or variants are contradictory?

Levi-Strauss has an answer to that question, which is one of the reasons that his essay has been so influential. He says, for starters, that instead of looking for the original version of a myth, we should study all of the versions at once. "There is no single 'true' version of which all the others are copies or distortions," he explains. "Every version belongs to the truth" (816).

Levi-Strauss suggests that, far from being an impediment to the study of myth, the existence of contradictory variants can help us to understand the essential character and function of myth. By looking at all known variants of a myth, he argues, we can gain some insight into the "logical processes which are at the root of mythical thought" (818).

For example, Levi-Strauss thinks that "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions towards their resolution" (819). He believes that by studying variants, we can begin to see how oppositions are resolved through the production of a "chain of mediators," characters or events that bridge the original gap between, say, sky and earth or birth and death (819-20).

To understand Levi-Strauss's generalizations, you don't need to know a whole lot about the Zuni myth itself. Still, since you may want a few of the details, I've worked up a page that covers, briefly, a few of the Zuni stories. From here, you can also go back to the handout on Saussure and Levi-Strauss or on to the pages on the Oedipus myth.