Learning to Drive...Vogel Style

In her acclaimed literary creation, How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel tackles taboo topics with a gentle sincerity. She tints her dark subjects with humor; not to ease the chills, but to make the reactions more profound. Her play easily entwines wit, awkwardness, and controversy to create a tone like none other. The atmosphere seems to lack tension, even though the content is obscenely risky. I believe that Vogel’s success is rooted in her ability to balance. She manages to strike a balance between the obscene and prude, the awkward and comfortable, and the expected and unexpected. These jumbled tones act as a personal puzzle for the reader. Each reader can interpret and come away with a different emotional experience.
Vogel’s use of time shifts throughout the play evokes pathos for the seemingly undeserving. In the case of Drive, the reader is inclined to feel sympathy for Peck despite his pedophiliac and desperate relationship with Lil’ Bit, his niece. At times throughout the play, I found myself to be vulnerable and completely stripped of my personal defenses when reading about Lil' Bit's interactions with her uncle. Yet, this defenselessness opened my mind. I was forced to reexamine my pre-established opinions of pedophilia and molestation and face them with a new consciousness. By presenting the plot in a non-chronological manner, Vogel leaves the reader hanging until the bitter end. Her composition forces readers to render their own personal beliefs into new, mindful perceptions.