The Dragon Can free essay sample

# 8217 ; t Dance Essay, Research Paper The Dragon Can # 8217 ; T Dance The Dragon Can # 8217 ; t Dance. The writer, Earl Lovelace, allows even the non-indigenous reader to understand, to experience the physical and psychological worlds of destitute Calvary Hill # 8211 ; every # 8220 ; Sweet, writhing, aching aching # 8221 ; ( p. 133 ) # 8211 ; more intensely, more wholly, through his usage of paradox. Indeed, oxymorons pepper the pages of his novel, disputing our wonts of idea and arousing us into seeking another sense or context in which these self-contradictions may be resolved into truths, truths that are clearly cosmopolitan yet at the same clip inseparable from the combined coloring material and sordidness of post-World War II Trinidadian life. Striking contradictions are employed most often in the writer # 8217 ; s word picture of Sylvia. While she is a comparatively fringy character, in her, Lovelace limns a startlingly existent portrayal of a adult female, organic structure and psyche, and, as virtually all male characters in the novel are mesmerized by her, it is suiting that the extent of her power is most regularly conveyed in footings of paradox. We will write a custom essay sample on The Dragon Can or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Already at age 17 she possess a # 8220 ; cognizing artlessness # 8221 ; ( p.39 ) , intuitively cognizant of her sacrificial function to her overburdened female parent # 8217 ; s rent aggregator, Guy. When he would touch her, she sometimes stood still, feeling, about badly, the demand to hone the # 8220 ; exultant resignation # 8221 ; ( p.40 ) fitted for the prostitution that was her fate, if non her naming. Along with the omniscient storyteller, the supporter Aldrick Prospect is fascinated by her. When she comes with a white frock and oversized places to offer herself to him, he thinks that it is # 8220 ; as if she had come both to give herself and to defy his taking her. # 8221 ; Unable to accept the societal duty that she implies simply by her presence, Aldrick will subsequently see Sylvia in needfully contradictory footings as # 8220 ; Sylvia, that child, adult female # 8230 ; her eyes # 8230 ; inflaming a sort of active uncaring # 8221 ; ( p. 114 ) toward him. Her physical beauty, # 8220 ; the rhythmic rise-fall of her natess, the quavering up-downing of her buttocks # 8221 ; ( p.151 ) , will do him # 8220 ; injury for her, for the taming of her # 8221 ; ( p. 152 ) , for old ages to come. Graduating from the physical, nevertheless, that # 8220 ; up-downing, drop-rising # 8221 ; ( p. 152 ) of her underside, Aldrick will come to recognize that # 8220 ; her really desirableness placed her above ordinary desiring # 8221 ; ( p. 229 ) , the mere ownership which Guy intends, and it is at carnival that he foremost glimpses the hereafter that they might portion, how he might paradoxically # 8220 ; lose himself and derive himself in her, twirling off with her until together they disappeared into the ego that she was naming back, naming Forth # 8221 ; ( p. 141 ) . Repeating the Indian, Pariag, and Philo the Calypsonian, Aldrick begins to want to merely populate and love and turn, which is precisely why he has ever loved Sylvia: her beauty was non a arm, but a # 8220 ; declaration of a religion in life and a promise of life # 8221 ; ( p. 228 ) . He entirely realizes the paradox that Sylvia is both # 8220 ; illuminated and doomed by that aura # 8221 ; ( p. 229 ) of inner # 8220 ; sainted # 8221 ; beauty which Guy threatens to stamp down by efficaciously sequestering her in a new place in Diego Martin. Merely through the usage of paradox could Lovelace convey the full scope of emotion between Sylvia and Aldrick, who both realize early on the spiritualty of their love that blossomed like a Mangifera indica rose against the unmitigating background of Aldrick # 8217 ; s little room, the brainsick formation of boxboard and wood-board hovels on the Hill, against all of the physical and economic worlds of Port-of-Spain. When Sylvia notices Aldrick coming up the Hill after his five-year prison sentence, for illustration, the sight of him sends # 8220 ; a chilling runing thrilling experiencing # 8221 ; through her flesh ( P . 206 ) . The oxymoron is particularly disposed given the strength of her true feelings for Aldrick and her guilty cognition of the fact that she has affianced herself to Guy entirely for economic grounds. Lovelace continues to use paradoxes to to the full dramatise the ubiquitous economic tensenesss in Calvary Hill. For all of Diego Martin # 8217 ; s comparative asepsis # 8211 ; # 8220 ; the newness and sameness of everything # 8221 ; ( p. 227 ) # 8211 ; the streets of the Hill remain # 8220 ; the really backbones of emptiness # 8221 ; ( p. 143 ) , and Fisheye and his set of ill-affected warriors have small else to make but lounge at the Corner, keeping their organic structures # 8220 ; in that relaxed animation # 8221 ; ( p. 26 ) as they watch # 8220 ; the humdrum prosaic journeying of people ensnared in their day-to-day surviving, a ritual driven # 8230 ; set in gesture, # 8221 ; Lovelace writes, # 8220 ; by that most baronial and obscene ground: the married woman, the kids, the belly, the dorsum of the pes ; the demand to maintain maintaining on # 8221 ; ( p. 166 ) . It is easy discernible how maintaining on in such economic conditions is # 8220 ; baronial and obscen e # 8221 ; at the same clip. The oxymoron serves to increase the sense of pragmatism and, with it, the built-in poignancy for the predicament of the uprooted urban workers # 8211 ; even for Fisheye and his unemployed bullies. Frustration and choler # 8211 ; # 8220 ; an choler older than themselves # 8221 ; ( p. 164 ) # 8211 ; is the inevitable consequence, which manifest in the posturing and ultimate misdirected force of Fisheye and his set. With effortless narrative gait, Lovelace # 8217 ; s description of the set members # 8217 ; # 8220 ; tight humorless smiles # 8221 ; ( p.165 ) culminates in the # 8220 ; serious stupidity # 8230 ; the of import stupidity # 8221 ; ( p. 179 ) of their failed pseudo-revolution in Woodford Square. Finally, the racial biass which characterize the Hill are besides efficaciously dramatized in self-contradictory footings. Despite Miss Cleothilda # 8217 ; s excavate oxymoronic axiom, # 8220 ; All o # 8217 ; we is one # 8221 ; ( p. 14 ) , an foreigner like the Indian, Pariag, will neer be able to experience a human bond with the others in the Yard. Then once more, that is non entirely true ; merely paradoxes can accurately and adequately convey the urban truth. It is merely after the devastation of his bike that the Yard can see past Pariag # 8217 ; s race to his humanity ; Pariag feels this intimacy every bit good. However, with the culturally pluralistic ideal about in range, Lovelace translates the self-contradictory and practical world for the reader: Pariag # 8230 ; felt touched that they had recognized him # 8230 ; Yet, it pained him that they had recognized him merely at that minute when he was pulling off ; and this hurting brought a height to his walk, so that he was at that clip both closer to them and further from them. It would be across this distance and with this intimacy that they would see each other henceforth ( p. 155 ) . Even Fisheye will finally halt coercing # 8220 ; two shilling # 8221 ; from Pariag whenever Pariag base on ballss by him. But when a immature fellar says to him, # 8220 ; I didn # 8217 ; T know he was your friend, # 8221 ; Fisheye responds: # 8220 ; Get the degree Fahrenheit # 8211 ; out of here, who say he is my friend # 8221 ; ( p. 155 ) ? Of class Fisheye # 8217 ; s come back contradicts what he unconsciously feels inside, but it is declarative of that apparently unachievable end of non merely Trinidad and Tobago, but of all states # 8211 ; # 8220 ; Indian, Chinee, white, black, rich, hapless # 8221 ; ( p. 163 ) # 8211 ; that Pariag redefines, thought of Miss Cleothilda and her All o # 8217 ; we is one: # 8220 ; No. We didn # 8217 ; Ts have to run into one. I woulda be me for my ain ego. A get downing # 8230 ; # 8217 ; ( p. 224 ) . And Lovelace # 8217 ; s vision in The Dragon Can # 8217 ; t Dance provides merely that: a microcosmic beginning, pealing challenging, all-too-relevant truths about humanity from a universe of self-contradictions, through a limpid poesy of paradox. To borrow Lovelace # 8217 ; s ain words about Miss Cleothilda, his is arguably a novel of # 8220 ; brave and pious magnificence # 8221 ; ( p. 147 ) .