The Dragon Can't Dance - Others Interpretations of The Deeper Meanings

Others Interpretations of The Deeper Meanings

In The Dragon Can't Dance, the hope for personal and community transformation is at the heart of the novel. After researching numerous analyses of the novel, several significant and more profound meanings appear to rise to the surface. These deeper meanings consist of the importance of "performativity" as it relates to cultural resistance, the strategy of the performer (or the lack thereof), and the viability of transformation available to individual or group identities when no adjustment is made to fit in with current day norms or standards.

As with other post-colonial populations, Trinidad's society represents a culture of resistance in response to the tyranny of slavery and colonialism in general. Although this expression of resistance is prevalent and observable in daily life, it is especially evident during Carnival and its performances where large audiences are in attendance. According to Nadia Johnson, "the performativity of Trinidad's carnival becomes an outward expression of Calvary Hill's need to transform their social conditions. The characters respond to and resist their social conditions through their individual performances during the carnival season: Fisheye's steel band performance, Aldrick's dragon dance, and Philo's calypsos". If transformation of identity is the goal, then it is critical to assess which performances are effective in contributing to the transformation.

Mawuena Logan, in her article "Postcoloniality and Resistance in Earl Lovelace's The Wine of Astonishment and The Dragon Can't Dance", refers to Frantz Fanon who describes "the postcolonial subject" as being in a "zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity, but – where an authentic upheaval can be born - a liminal space". Performing one's way out of this liminal space and transforming identity into an ""aggregated or consummated" form is a complex process that requires time, but the reward is true freedom.

Our first performer, Fisheye, chooses to use his steelband music as his "agent of cultural resistance in Carnival". He regards this music and anyone involved with it as "sacred" and has no patience for those who he believes try to commercialize it. In fact, he withdraws from the steelband group in protest. This action causes him to deprive himself from future opportunities to perform his way toward a more transformed identity. Ultimately, he decides to go in a more violent direction with the Calvary Nine and ends up in jail.

Aldrick considers his dragon costume and his two-day performance in Carnival to be his magical route to helping himself and "the little fellars in the Yard". At first he believes whole-heartedly that his performance is capable of bringing about transformation, but gradually he becomes disenchanted and chooses to follow the Calvary Nine route to nowhere. Logan posits that Aldrick's "annual donning of the dragon costume in remembrance of the ancestors" and his next move of joining the Calvary Nine "which parallels the ritual of his dragon costume, is equally futile". Aldrick had no real strategy or plan to support his wish for transformation. "Both the ritual dragon dance/costume and the open rebellion without a plan or definite goal constitute that postcolonial moment that is devoid of any tangible and positive results because it is lacking in thoughtful action: the ritual subject is stuck between two realities, betwixt and between the past and the future."

Nadia Johnson on the other hand believed that Philo had developed a strategy vis-à-vis his calypso performances that yielded immense progress in terms of his personal transformation of identity and indirectly produced similar benefits to his community on Calvary Hill. Although previously described as a "Judas" because of his "betrayal" of the non-possession ideology of the hill, by the end of the novel, it is Philo who returns to his origins hoping to continue his life.

If the performer is effective, what is his strategy or "thoughtful action". What is highly significant in this process is which of these performances is effective and what makes certain performances more effective than others. colonialism and poverty are other themes highlighted in a large proportion in the novel