This is an essay that I wrote for my Playwriting class on How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel. In it, a woman in her 30s, Li’l Bit, tells the story of her relationship with her uncle, Peck, and how it came to happen. Vogel uses time to her advantage, by going back in forth in her memories, signified by certain parts of a driver’s ed class. This essay looks at this time shifting in the play and why it was used by Vogel to create the most emotional effect.

 

At first, Vogel chooses to introduce the audience to Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit close to the end of their relationship. The narrator is Li’l Bit herself, and it seems that Vogel is not so much dictating the play’s time but that Li’l Bit is telling the story in her own unique way. As Li’l Bit and Peck’s conversation unfolds, the audience is led to the assumption that Li’l Bit is having an affair with an older man, which is true, but Li’l Bit conceals the fact that Uncle Peck is in fact her uncle until late in the scene. It is also important to note that Vogel hides this fact from her reader as well in the character names. In the beginning of the play, when Vogel outlines the characters, she refers to Uncle Peck as just Peck, making no mention of his relation to Li’l Bit. Also, Vogel refers to Uncle Peck as just “Peck” in her dialogue lines, which one assumes to mean that the familial link between Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit is meant to shock at the end of scene 1.

 

While scene 1 is the audience’s introduction to Uncle Peck’s and Li’l Bit’s relationship just before it ends, the final scene (the last “You in the Reverse Gear”) is strikingly similar in events. These scenes seem to bookend the play, and it does not feel like a coincidence that both are very similar. While scene 1 shows Li’l Bit more comfortable with Uncle Peck’s sexual advances, where she is almost accepting just to get the encounter over with, the last scene depicts Li’l Bit as truly terrified of what is happening, and shows her lack of control. This was an important decision on Vogel’s part as to where these scenes would appear in the play. When the audience sees the scene 1 first, they feel like Li’l Bit is playing a part in the affair, and has a say in the relationship. At the end of the play, however, emotion is created dramatically because the audience learns that Li’l Bit was not an instigator, but was molested. This shift in thought produces many emotions for the viewer – shock and disgust at what has been happening in Li’l Bit’s life, anger at Uncle Peck for his behavior, sadness towards Li’l Bits circumstances, and even a little guilt for not seeing Li’l Bit’s innocence. If the last scene had appeared first in the play, the viewer would not have been surprised throughout the whole play. They would already know that Li’l Bit had been taken advantage of, and the emotions would not have been as intense and varied as they are when the scenes are presented out of their chronological order.

  

Another tactic that Vogel uses to create suspense and emotion is the fact that she has Li’l Bit present the audience with background information on Li’l Bit’s life and her associations with Uncle Peck. When Li’l Bit talks of her family, she outlines the fact, both subtly and literally, that she has grown up in an environment that is overtly sexual and uncomfortable. She shows the audience a scene where her family is discussing Li’l Bit’s breasts over the dinner table, and when she is uncomfortable and runs out of the room, Uncle Peck is the one to come outside and help her with her troubles. Li’l Bit shows the audience that Peck understands her, comforts her, and is the one that is always there for her, unlike her strange relatives. This comparison between Peck’s normality and her immediate family’s strangeness is ironic, for at the end of the play the audience will come to see Peck as a strange man himself. It is the lesser of two evils, it seems, that Li’l Bit turns to. Yet it is interesting that Vogel (through Li’l Bit) has chosen to show the audience this scene directly after the scene about Peck and Li’l Bit’s affair, because it appears that Li’l Bit is trying to offer a reason as to why she is together with her uncle. At this point, the audience does not feel any loathing for Peck – they understand Li’l Bit’s emotional insecurities and her reasons for running to Peck in her time of need. However, if the audience were to know before this scene that Peck had taken advantage of Li’l Bit, they would not feel anything for Peck except their contempt. Towards the end of the play, looking back at this scene, one can understand that Li’l Bit has conflicting feelings towards Peck and their relationship, because on the one hand she is disgusted with it and knows that it cannot go on, but on the other hand, he was a person who she could run to when she needed help. This scene helps to give the audience these conflicting feelings inside Li’l Bit’s head, and since it comes right after her first scene late in Peck’s and Li’l Bit’s affair, it does not seem so much an excuse as it is a reason for Li’l Bit’s affection. This also seems to come into effect as Li’l Bit presents her high school problems, too. Her friends and classmates do not seem normal when they are picking on Li’l Bit’s breast size – another reason why Peck could be the understanding man that she could go to.

  

The scene in which Li’l Bit gets drunk with Uncle Peck at the restaurant is one of the stronger indicators that something fishy is going on with Peck. Peck’s openness and actual support of Li’l Bit getting drunk seems to indicate that Peck has bigger plans than just going to dinner. He never does anything to Li’l Bit, but his encouragement of her inebriation is one of the first signs in the play that Peck is a shady figure. It happens as foreshadowing to what’s to come in the play. Yet it would not be foreshadowing if this had happened in actual chronological order, because one would already know that Peck had molested Li’l Bit, and his encouragement of her drunkenness would actually fuel the audience with more contempt of Uncle Peck. In this way, Vogel creates suspense as to what might happen in the play, which is more of an emotional shock at the end than if the audience were to know that Peck was a child molester.

 

The scenes that happen after the restaurant again give the audience more reasons to see Peck as an escape for Li’l Bit, more excuses as to why Li’l Bit could be persuaded by Peck. However, when Peck gives his monologue to Bobby on the fishing trip, the audience is again presented with a darker side of Peck. They are now more inclined to think that Peck is not the kind and gentle uncle that they once thought him to be, and it creates a sinister feeling inside the reader. They begin to wonder if Peck is actually up to no good. It is here where the anger towards Peck begins to rise – one realizes that Peck is very good at persuasion, especially to young children, and that Li’l Bit might have been Peck’s victim. It is important for the play that this scene occur here – it is only a hint towards Peck’s abuse, which creates anger and suspicion in the reader. If the scene had not been presented here, it might have not even had any use in the play, because the audience would already know that Peck was a molester from the start and they would not need this irrelevant situation. However, as presented in the middle of the play, the scene creates emotion because it serves as a dark omen for the end of the play, and a lead-in to the conflict which will occur.

 

As the play progresses, the audience sees more and more hints that Peck is a malevolent character. Finally, we are presented with the end of the relationship, as Peck has been stalking Li’l Bit at college until her 18^th birthday. This serves as another red flag, as when she turns 18 she will be legal for sexual consent. Li’l Bit realizes at this point that it is time to break things off with Peck, and she does so after he proposes to her. After this scene, the audience is shown a scene early on in Li’l Bit’s life when she wants to go see Uncle Peck and her mother tells her that if anything happens between Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit, she will hold her responsible for it. It is here that one realizes that she did not have the support from her mother that she should have, and is one reason why things happened the way they did. By showing us the scene here, and before the scene where Li’l Bit is actually physically molested, one can see that as an eleven-year-old, Li’l Bit is too young to make the distinction of what could happen here. The audience is led to the conclusion of the play, where they find that Peck has forced himself on Li’l Bit, which creates the ultimate emotional rush – the pain and sadness for Li’l Bit, the anger towards Peck, the guilt towards Li’l Bit, and also, the confusion as to how one could have been led to believe that Peck was a good man. It is here that the audience is given the same feeling as Li’l Bit in the play; Vogel creates a character that, through time manipulation, has managed to trick the audience into believing in his purity, as he has done with Li’l Bit. This is one of the strongest emotions that the play projects – the fact that Peck could manipulate the audience generates understanding of how Li’l Bit could succumb to his advances, and that is truly terrifying.