Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Amitav Ghosh: A Comparative Study

Huxley once framed an idea of the future of literature through his dystopian work, “Brave New World”. One of his characters ironically states that the end of conversation will seize the existence of literature (Bélanger). Times have past, wars have ended and the argument of ‘earth being flat’ has arrived (Friedman). The conversations and communications between cultures, races, nation and people have only increased with time (Friedman). Gayatri Spivak questions the culture and advocates the subaltern in her works. The Post-Structuralist frames the history about how the subalterns are unable to become a part of a discourse in the history of human civilization (Spivak). Huxley was wrong in citing the future whereas Spivak is right in recounting the past.

Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Booker prize winner Amitav Ghosh both have framed their most famous narratives through the statements of the conflicts of the local inhabitants and the state but in drastically different ways (Tomsky). The advent of new economic and capitalistic ideas of neo-liberalism, globalisation has formulated an idea that the essence of democracy is only about making money (Barry). 

The purpose of the study is to understand the post-colonial, neo-liberal and state implemented approach of industrialisation along with the advent of globalisation in the major works of two twentieth century writers, Amitav Ghosh and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Amitav Ghosh’s works like Ibis trilogy, “The Glass Palace” and “The Hungry Tide” and Marquez’s work “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. 

Marquez, a literary genius of the Iberian world frames the history in his most famous work “One Hundred years of Solitude” through traditional story telling methods, meta-fictionary elements and magic reality through a continuous conflict between the local and the grand narrative (Friesen, Maren and Heath). Marquez interprets history, constructs a new history and future. Along with this he challenges and criticises the constructed history of the colonizers and retells the history from the view point of a local narrator. He manipulates the tale of the Buendia family in his own means and presents an ironical view time and again. Marquez displays how the state becomes the all powerful and capable of constructing a fictionalised history. The description of the genocide in the banana plantations of Macondo is a clear indication of the authoritative government and the suppressed citizens of the country who have suffered continuous setbacks during their existence (Friesen, Maren and Heath). The advent of industrialisation in the fictional Macondo is a clear depiction of the picture of neo-liberalism in South America (Wood).

History, Science, and Technology in Marquez and Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh, a famous Indian journalist turned writer also presents a similar discourse in his fictional works including “The Hungry Tide” and “the Glass Palace” (Choudhury). In “the Hungry tide” Ghosh presents a conflict between the globalised of environmentalism against the local culture which co-exists with the environment (Choudhury). Whereas in The Glass palace, Ghosh outlines a picture of the human civilization in the south-east Asia along with the various industrial needs and requirements of the new growing economic markets and technological advancements around the world. Ghosh believes that every fiction is a historical fiction and every documented analogy is constructed mostly by the grand narrative (Tomsky). The genocide of Marichjhapi in “The Hungry Tide” is a clear indication of the power of the state on the local inhabitant (Choudhury). The justification of the crime can be understood by the assessments of the world agencies like the World Bank and the IMF.

Both Ghosh and Marquez are the writers of the second half of the 20^th century. Both of them belong to the third world countries of different parts of the world. The entire structure, history and the way of thinking is rescheduled, remodelled and rewritten by the colonizers in order to suit their own rule. Both Ghosh and Marquez present a world where technology and science is looked from a different perspective. In “One Hundred Years of Solitude” Marquez presents every idea of science by countering it with Jose Arcadio Buendia’s sudden assumptions about the earth being round, Colonel Aureliano’s experiments with alchemy, the magical entry of railway into Macondo along with Melquiades with his products of the civilized world (Wood). Ghosh frames a polyphonic narrative to construct the problem of the globalised world and the civilised society to understand the nature and its inhabitants, whereas Marquez critics the entire myth of creation and destruction of human civilization through the phases of the ‘scientific and technological’ development (Wood). Ghosh elaborately emphasises in his novel “The Glass Palace”, how the characters of his novel develops different business opportunities in different time frames and how migrant labourers are brought from India as slaves and cheap labourers (Choudhury). Both these point of views are about the transformation of human civilization from an environmental organism to an industrial factor of production in the present age.

The aims of the research are as follows:

• To understand the advent of industrialisation and its drastic impacts in the third world economy in relation to the works of Marquez and Amitav Ghosh.
• To understand the history of the oppression of the labour and to emulate the state versus the local conflict in the third world through the incidents of the genocide in Macondo and Marichjhapi in terms of Marxisism and neo-liberalism.
• To evaluate the arrival of globalisation and global technology in the third world through the works of Amitav Ghosh and Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

The research questions on which the proposals are based on are:

• What are the impacts of industrialisation in the historical and meta-historical narratives of Ghosh’s works and Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”?
• What are the implications of the situation of labour and slavery in the works of Amitav Ghosh and Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”?
• What are the impacts of globalisation and scientific technology in the third world depicted in the works of Amitav Ghosh and Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”?

State Power and Ideology in the Works of Ghosh and Marquez

Kwame Nkrumah states in his neo-colonial theory that the new form of colonialism has replaced the old fashioned way (Nkrumah). The oppression is operated through the apparatus of state and the exploitation is more often economic than racial. Marquez and Amitav Ghosh depict the similar idea in “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “the Hungry Tide”. In the long driven quest of mankind in search of a better culture, science, technology and state, the subaltern are left and the elite holds the bow (Spivak). In the present era of capitalism and globalisation, the people living in the nation states have been subjugated and vanquished by the state in the name of development and progress. The conflict between the state and the oppressed citizens in Macondo and Marichjhapi and the victory of the inevitable state over the subjugated citizens can be analysed the ideas of literature and sub-altern is similar to the works of Spivak (Spivak). Fukuyama states in his book, “The End of History and the Last Man” the history has already ended and the ideology of capitalism has taken over and it will win everywhere (Fukuyama). Similar to this idea, Marquez mocks the entire idea of documented history of Columbia through a reconstruction of the history through mythical and magical dispositions to create a world where creation and destruction is bounded in a cycle of incidents. Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat” is a depiction of the growing technological and communicational activities in the third world (Friedman). The discovery of magnifying glass and magnate in Marquez and the diagnostic equipments in “The Hungry Tide” displays the advent of global technology into the rural areas of the third word. However, Marquez mocks it through his narrative and Amitav Ghosh uses this as an ironical element in the midst of the genocide. The ideology of the state apparatus is vividly discussed by Althusser’s essays on ideology (Althusser). The implementation of ideology in a territory or an economic area is depicted in Marquez and Ghosh. The display of the state power in the works of Ghosh and Marquez can be analysed properly through the works of Althusser.

Research methodology refers to the process of the research. It determines the mode of the research, the data collection process, the process of data sampling and analysis and so on (Smith). The entire methodology is qualitative and dependent on secondary research works (Smith).

• Descriptive research study: To conduct this research it is necessary to study all the major texts of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Amitav Ghosh to understand their narrative style and worldview. Along with all the major texts it was important to understand post colonialism. The texts on post colonialism should be assessed properly from the resources of authentic publishing houses like Oxford, Cambridge, Norton and Routledge.  
• Exploratory Research Method: There are a very few researches on such a comparative study between two authors of the third world. The research is based on the theories of Neo-liberalism, Althusser’s theory of ideology, Spivak’s theory of sub-altern and works Friedman and Fukuyama.
• Hypothesis test research: The research is a qualitative study. This hypothesis of the research is provide enough instances and ideas how the free indirect discourse is impactful to the research. A comparative study of the referred works of Ghosh and Marquez along with the post-colonial, neo-liberal and Marxist theory will be the primary method of the research.

Since the research is not going to depend on the statistical data, it will follow the hypothesis testing method.

Research Methodology

Data collection involves two different categories- primary data collection and secondary data collection. Primary data re collected through personal interviews, survey method, where as the secondary data refers to the existing literary and critical works quite closely on the topic. It comprises of the peer reviewed journal articles, the books and government authenticated websites (Smith). The data for this research is basically collected from various articles, journals, books along with the works of Marquez and Amitav Ghosh.

The following research will retrieve the secondary data and go through the articles and research papers pertaining to the topic.

The research is based on the authentic texts of Gayatri Spivak’s theory of subaltern, Fukuyama’s book “The End of the History”, Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” , Althusser’s theory, “Ideology of State Apparatus” and Kwame Nkruma’s neo-colonial theory.

Conclusion

Both Marquez and Amitav Ghosh frame narratives which depicts the idea of the local versus the grand narrative. The idea of of Ghosh is to present history with polyphonic discourse and fictional stories whereas Marquez presents the history of his land by subjugating and interpreting the truth in a very diverse and complex pattern. The works of both these post-colonial writers depicts the process of industrialisation as a brutal force against the environmental concerns. The local idea of a culture is drastically different from the depiction of the colonial or imperialist powers. These novels depict the ideas of the labour workers, the migrants and the sufferance of the common people in the hands of the state and in the process of privatisation. Marquez showcases the introduction of technology as a mere eagerness of the Buendias whereas, Ghosh states it as a form of necessity which is not utilised properly.

References

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation).” The anthropology of the state: A reader 9.1 (2006): 86-98.

Barry, Andrew, and Thomas Osborne, eds. Foucault and Political Reason: liberalism, neo-liberalism and the rationalities of government. Routledge, 2013.

Bélanger, Laurent. “How does Aldous Huxley create a sense of control in Brave New World to reflect social, economic and cultural changes in the early 20th Century?.” (2015).

Choudhury, Bibhash. Amitav Ghosh: Critical Essays. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., 2016.

Friedman, Thomas L. “The Earth is flat.” Brief history of XXI (2007).

Friesen, Maren L., and Katy D. Heath. “One hundred years of solitude: integrating single?strain inoculations with community perspectives in the legume–rhizobium symbiosis.” New Phytologist 198.1 (2013): 7-9.

Fukuyama, Francis. The end of history and the last man. Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Nkrumah, Kwame. “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. 1965.” New York: International (1966).

Smith, Jonathan A., ed. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage, 2015..

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the subaltern speak?.” Can the subaltern speak? Reflections on the history of an idea (1988): 21-78.

Tomsky, Terri. “Amitav Ghosh’s Anxious Witnessing and the Ethics of Action in The Hungry Tide.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 44.1 (2009): 53-65.

Wood, Michael. Gabriel García Márquez: One hundred years of solitude. CUP Archive, 1990.