Set in Port of Spain, the novel centres on the life of Aldrick Prospect, a man who spends the entire year recreating his dragon costume for Carnival.

Aldrick's interactions with other people who live in his neighbourhood (including Fisheye, a local hoodlum, and Pariag, a rural Indian who moves to the city to get away from his familial heritage) form the backdrop for their individual struggles for self-definition in a society dominated by its racial divisions and colonial legacies.

[2] "By 1783, the Spanish government had recognized that French planters, with their slaves, capital and expertise in the cultivation of tropical staples, would have to be attracted if Trinidad was to develop as a plantation colony.

[2] The principal incentive that the Cedula offered was a free grant of land to every settler who came to Trinidad with his slaves with two stipulations: the emigrant had to be a Roman Catholic and the subject of a nation friendly to Spain.

[2] This was due to many reasons, some of which were a religion differing from the norm (especially Hinduism), the lower economic status with which Indians were subjected to, and they were judged as morally unprincipled and degraded.

There were bands of prostitutes who roamed the streets, traditional masques with explicit sexual themes, and the Pissenlit (played by masked men dressed as women in long transparent nightdresses).

According to scholar Neptune Harvey, during the colonial era, as in other colonized regions, "whiteness was synonymous with political, economic, and social privilege and maintaining this equivalence was an official priority and an elite preoccupation.

[9] The production of oil marked the beginning of the globalization and investment of capital in Trinidad, a theme that is apparent throughout The Dragon Can't Dance and is the source of much conflict of the novel.

Prologue The main stage for the development of the plot, Calvary Hill, is introduced through a series of descriptive elements that portray it as being something close to a slum, favela, or barrio.

The mood of the hill is described through the lifestyle of Aldrick Prospect, the novel's main character: "[he] would get up at midday from sleep, yawn, stretch, then start to think of where he might get something to eat, his brain working in the same smooth unhurried nonchalance with which he moved his feet".

Guy is quick to promise her any costume she desires in an effort to become her man, however, his attempt is interrupted by Miss Cleothilda, who is aware of the situation and purposely intrudes by offering Sylvia one of her old dresses.

Aldrick is able to observe her silhouette in the dark from his window, but hesitates to approach her as he believes that she is the most dangerous women on the hill because she has the ability to "capture him in passion but to enslave him in caring, to bring into his world those ideas of love and home and children that he [has] spent his whole life avoiding" (31).

Fisheye learns that senior members of the Calvary Hill band are considering his expulsion, and while he waits for them to approach him, the novel jumps back to the point when we see Aldrick coming to deliver Basil home.

After realizing that this job brings him no meaningful social interactions, he ventures into selling roasted peanuts and boiled and fried chhena at the race track on Saturdays and at football games on Sundays.

The following morning, hung-over from a night of drinking with Philo, Aldrick notices Pariag at his door asking him to paint a sign on a box for him: "Boya for Indian Delicacies, Barra, and Doubles!!!

"[15] Aware of the conflict that will soon arise on the Hill and wanting to remain neutral, Aldrick dismisses him with the excuse of being tired and asks him to come back later.

Aldrick follows a yearly ritual of putting on his costume and entering a new mental state with a dragon mask that gives him a mission of upholding an unending rebellion.

Meanwhile, Miss Cleothilda recognized, for the first time, a change in the yard that threatens her position of queen: a combination of Philo's newfound success, her inability to convince Aldrick to do something about Pariag's continued presence, and most of all, Sylvia's new man, Guy.

Friends and Family Pariag marches his bicycle down Alice street in a funeral procession-like manner, while Fisheye, Aldrick and some other youth from around Calvary Hill watch closely from the corner.

In the days after the bicycle accident, Pariag thinks deeply of his existence and purpose in his life, and because he steps back to view himself, it brings him closer to his wife, Dolly.

His wealthy uncle calls for him and criticizes his decision to move to Port of Spain: "Is so you want to live, among Creole people, like cat and dog, and forget your family.

The Dragon Can't Dance Aldrick returns to Calvary Hill after six years in prison and is greeted like a hero, yet he feels more like he is being received by a band of deserters that have long made peace with the enemy.

As he thinks about Sylvia's position in the yard as the symbol of youth and hope, he remembers Aldrick's love for her, but also Guy's taste for young women and his ability to get what he wanted.

Cleothilda explains some of Sylvia's side love interests, one man whom identified strongly with Africa, another that spoke passionately about Cuba, Vietnam, China and Trinidad's potential for revolution.

In the novel The Dragon Can't Dance, author Earl Lovelace expresses several reoccurring themes that illustrate fundamental psychological losses, which the characters are trying to rediscover and re-establish on a personal, and community level.

Since the opportunities for expressing self-worth and intrinsic value are so limited on Calvary Hill (and Trinidad overall), even minor roles within the community become critical to people, especially if they have been alienated and marginalized.

Performing one's way out of this liminal space and transforming identity into an "aggregated or consummated" form[31] is a complex process that requires time, but the reward is true freedom.

"[30] 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.

While the author currently dedicates much of his time to advocating for reparations to be made to descendant slaves, the legacy of his writing continues to resonate within Trinidadian society in the efforts to rebuild a positive sense of identity in the Caribbean.

[39] While most of the plot in The Dragon Can't Dance takes place in Port of Spain, many of its characters are migrants from rural areas that attempt to create individual lifestyles in the unsettling and dislocated slums of Calvary Hill.