Portrayal of Ecological Imperialism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude

Abstract

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) belongs to a league of a handful of writers who influenced or rather charted the path of literature in Twentieth century. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970) is considered to be the magnum opus of this Nobel laureate. This paper attempts to explore the portrayal of ecological imperialism, an aspect explained by postcolonial theorists in the aforesaid novel of Marquez. The paper is structured with three parts. To begin with the background of the text will be discussed in brief and along with that the plot will be presented. It is essential to do so as Marquez’s texts, going by the classification of Roland Barthes, fall under the category of writerly texts. Writerly texts are complex in nature and it is essential to explain them before applying a theory to elucidate certain elements that are present in these texts. In the second part, the idea of ecological imperialism will be explained. In the concluding part,portrayal of ecological imperialism in the chosen text, will be discussed.