The dragon can\'t dance

Basic
Advanced

Field

Condition

Type of search

Value

Search for:

Objects
Collections

The dragon can't dance

The illustration on the jacket front depicts a large colorful festival dragon breathing fire. Two palm trees are behind it, and to the right are two steel pan drums and two drum sticks.

About this item

Title:: The dragon can't dance

Identifier:: PR9272.9.L6D721979

Permalink:: https://n2t.net/ark:/81984/d34s0z

Type:: Image

Notes:: Kiran Patel did the jacket illustration. Judy Rollins took the author photograph. Trinidad is Earl Lovelace's consistent subject. The "Dragon Can't Dance" focuses on that ritual that is quintessentially Trinidadian, carnival, and the transformative magic it performs on the lives of all Trinidadians, but especially those who are most marginalized. Set in Calvary Hill slum of Port of Spain, the characters of this novel represent the poor from both populations that comprise, almost in equal numbers, modern Trinidad: African and South Asian. The main character, Aldrick Prospect, spends each year looking forward to play mas', or dressing up, as a dragon for Carnival. The novel is embroiled in slum community life, as Aldrick interacts with, among others, Miss Cleothilda, an aging Carnival queen, Philo the Calypsonian, and Fisheye the steel drum band member. As the novel moves from neighborhood relationships into its climax, Aldrick and Fisheye, with a small group of followers, hijack a police van and take two of its officers hostage. The circumstances surrounding the hostage-taking and its aftermath probe the colonial and racial divisions at the center of Lovelace's universe. The Dragon Can't Dance is at the heart of the Carnival novel tradition. Each Calvary Hill resident has an identity in direct relationship to their participation in the annual Carnival. The story simultaneously introduces and celebrates the libratory potential of the yearly dress-up, while directing the reader to reflect on a society whose emotional survival is invested in a too infrequent and too short period of drinking and dancing. The tensions within and between the African and South Asian populations are dramatically, and often comically, represented in the novel. These are complex and ever present tensions that derive not only from cultural and racial differences, but also from historical issues such as primacy, stemming from the historic order in which these populations were forcibly brought to the island, and their often diverse development. Although the African populations were brought to the island through the slave trade, which ended in 1807, and the South Asian population was brought as indentured labor in 1838, when the black slaves were fully emancipated, to replace slave labor in the then largely plantation economy, the South Asian population, by the 20th century, much surpassed the black at least economically. This is a subject Lovelace often deals with in his novels, treating the fierce rivalries between the two groups with irony and compassionate laughter. The question of history arises here both in the depiction of these two groups in this novel and the ritual stability carnival can bring at least momentarily. In this respect, the novel also picks up on the sense of exile that marks Caribbean writing in general, since all populations in the region came from elsewhere. The uniqueness of the Caribbean in the postcolonial world derives much from this aspect, that almost no indigenous population exists, and consequently is the subject of study as an example of both the African and the Asian diasporas. But if the Caribbean is a place of exiles, it became, in the latter half of the twentieth century, a place from which people went into exile, usually to Britain. The causes of this recent Caribbean diaspora, economic and social instability as a result of colonial underdevelopment, is clearly represented in this novel. Receiving little critical notice with his first two novels, The Dragon Can't Dance launched the author's reputation and has made this novel one of the greatest celebrated works of Caribbean fiction.