Globalisation and its Resistance: A Study of Gabriel García Márquez'sOne Hundred Years of Solitude

I want to know how globalisation has affected the concept of identity, the tenets of globalisation and its effects on mythical landscapes. Macondo's solitude and the old band of gypsies and Melquiades's premonition - the transformation of Macondo from a mythical landscape to a centre of commerce. The resistance of the Buendias and the invitation of trouble, the construction of the railroad and the global markets invading the bazaar and lifestyle changes are all pangs of globalisation. I want to portray how Macondo resists the idea of an alien culture, increase in the system of production, the '[B]anana company' and wage labour. Macondo becomes a fully functional city with various populated sections. Mr. Brown's locomotive, the arrival of the international bureaucrats, the advent of state machinery and various reforms are the marks of neo-liberal reforms. The circularity of the Buendia family tree as a form of looking back towards that undiscovered stretch of land, a resultant cyclicality of events and preferring myth to market. The discontent of Colonel Aureliano Buendia and his consequent death along with Macondo's resistance. The great deluge comes and the place recedes into a city that loses connection with the world. The extinction of the line of the Buendias come to mean the isolation and Macondo's final and irreversible solitude. Finally I want to show how solitude can be a way of resistance and questioning this very possibility of resistance in the third way globalisation of the 1990s.