This study is an attempt to analyze the story titled İns [Humans], written by A. Cahit Zarifoğlu (1974) by utilizing the semiotic method. Cahit Zarifoğlu is known for his poetry, yet he has also contributed to other literary genres, including stories, novels, memoirs, theater, essays, and various forms of children’s literature. İns, which is the focus of the study, is a literary work that portrays the historical journey of humanity through intense symbolic references and mystical allusions using a cinematic narrative technique. Almost all critics and scholars seem to agree that Zarifoğlu’s stories are mythic, symbolic, and multi-layered. From this point of view, using the semiotic method for analyzing the various layers of meaning inherent in this narrative seems important. 

Firstly, the study makes an analysis of the structure and organization that form the basis of the story. This part of the analysis covers the story’s segmentation in the order in which it was originally serialized and the narrative schedule. The story was serialized in five parts and published in two different magazines: Diriliş and Edebiyat. Zarifoğlu indicated that his story was unfinished and would have been a more comprehensive narrative. However, the story does not appear to be a disconnected work in its present form. Although Zarifoğlu stated that he had made additions and edits to the story, these additions and edits were not changes that would affect the general framework of the narrative. In this sense, the serialization of the story is seen as appropriate for the segmentation analysis, and thus the study examines the five sections of the story in total. 

In semiotic analysis, the object can be a material element or an abstract value. In this sense, the object of basic value in the story can be considered to be understanding, while the object of acquisition is the ability to speak. This is due to İns exhibiting the modality of willing as one of the modal categories in the story through the desire to understand and to speak. Within this scope, this study uses the tools of semiotics to explore the relationship between these two components within the scope of İns. From this point of view, while the beginning of the story is seen to have a separation in terms of the comprehension of meaning, by the end of the story, a situation of unification emerges in terms of speech and the attainment of meaning as a result of the transformations that occur. The study then explains the process of the subject’s attainment of the object of basic value and the object of acquisition with regard to the story’s semantic structure of actants and the transformations they have undergone. The beginning of the story states, “İns was born on a silent night, full of darkness.”. By the end, İns has created meaning and speaks. The transformations Ins undergoes during this time can be listed as being powerless against nature, migrating, gaining the ability to develop cultural objects, and gaining power over nature. In the actant model, the subject is İns, the desire to understand is the object of value, the ability to speak is the object of acquisition, natural conditions, and divine impulse are the sender, the receiver is the cultural act, the helpers are Ins’ woman and Kuşçu, and the opponent is nature and performative deprivation.

The study’s second stage examines the story’s discursive level, with this section defining the thematic roles in the story and analyzing the symbols in the narrative. In this regard, the study employs fundamental contrasts, the semantic structure of agents, and variations to explain the story’s complex structure. The actors who have thematic roles in the story are İns, İns’ woman, Ins’ child, Ins’ Mother and Father, Kuşçu, the women and the wolf. This section also analyzes the symbols used in the story. Analyzing the figurative language required benefitting from the elements in the text as well as extra-textual information and methods from various branches of science regarding the interpretation of literary works. In addition, semiotics does not directly state that literary works should be analyzed completely detached from the external universe. Instead, it states that, with the right methodological approach, utilizing historical reality and the reality of life may also be useful. Various symbols in Zarifoğlu’s İns are observed to be intensively used to refer to different cultural universes. In this framework, the study analyzes the symbols referenced in the text based on the narrative schedule of the story. As a result, although Islamic symbols were observed to be generally utilized, references from other cultural universes were also observed to have been made in accordance with the mythic structure of the story.  

The study’s last stage examines the logico-semantic level. This section aims to reveal the abstract and logically deepest surface on which the universes of meaning in the narrative have been constructed. The study unveils the relationships that are imperceptible on the surface of the narrative based on the basic contradictions present in the content of the narrative. The semiotic square was used to explain these relations, to reach deeper meaning, and to reveal the units in the basic structure of a universe of meaning and the transformations between these units. Thus, the narrative’s structure on the deep surface can be expressed through binary oppositions, contradictions, and inclusions. 

As a result of the analysis at the logico-semantic level, the article has determined the main contrast in the story to be between meaning and meaninglessness along the axes of haqîqat [truth] and ghiz [secret] and of being language deprived and not being language deprived. Consequently, Cahit Zarifoğlu’s story handles the historical adventure of humanity within the framework of the opposition of meaning and meaninglessness using mythical and symbolic language, with İns being emphasized to comprehend meaning through his belief in wahdat [unity].