When the Mas’ Done: The Limits of Carnival in The Dragon Can’t Dance

In Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance, Carnival is at once both a resistant cultural inheritance and a politically unstable form of rebellion. This essay argues that while Carnival gives the dispossessed people of Calvary Hill a language through which to assert their personhood, it ultimately misdirects revolutionary potential to temporary, ephemeral forms. Through Aldrick's dragon, Fisheye's steelband, and the failed revolt of the People's Liberation Army, Lovelace exposes the limits of resistance when it remains contained within a spectacle. Through Philo, Sylvia, and the changing people of the Corner, Lovelace further shows that symbolic rebellion is incompatible with the material demands of hunger, work, and survival. Drawing on the research of Frantz Fanon, James C. Scott, Garth L. Green, Emily Zobel Marshall, Max Farrar, Guy Farrar, and Richard McGuire, this essay explores the phenomena of Carnival through equal parts sociology and post-colonial study. Further, it examines the position of Carnival in Caribbean literature and history.