Paula Vogel, as a Post-Modernist

Paula Vogel's play How I Learned to Drive is a post-modern work. This essay highlights the aspects of How I Learned to Drive as a post-modern text.  By focusing on form, the language and concerns of this play, this essay emphasises that the position of power and control is held by the narrator herself without relying on any master narrative.

As a post-modern text, How I Learned to Drive uses silence, chorus, stage, and a direct narration to the audience. The writer arranges the play in the way in which different textualities come together within the play to form it. This is the main characteristic of a post-modernism form in which representing any issue by its all meaning is bounded to text. As it has observed by Derrida: everything happens within the language, (lecture presentation, 13/10/2016, slide. 12). Unlike the ancient Greek dramas, the form of the play How I Learned to Drive is rendered by the intrinsic qualities of a post-modern theater in which the text is not patronized by a single dominative episteme and has used any means such as silence, chorus, stage, and narration to convey the meaning.

Although the Chorus has emerged frequently in this play, it is not just a background sound, as it used to be in ancient plays. As long as the play How I Learned to Drive mostly happens within language, the Chorus is acting as an echo to reflect the cause of the event which is language itself. Although the Chorus has a complementary role in this play, it also conveys the meaningful words and thus reveals the factors by which the life of Li’l Bit has been impacted one way or another, “FEMALE GREEK CHORUS (As mother): Look, Grandma. Li’l Bit’s getting to be as big in the bust as you are” (p. 563). In a post-modern play a vital part may dedicate to a chorus which otherwise could be played by a complete character, because “with the Chorus, Vogel is saying that it is language that shapes the events of Li’l Bit’s life — and by extension, of life in general” (5/10/2016, slide. 12).

In the beginning, even before the play discloses any concern between the protagonist Li'l Bit, and uncle Peck, a series of smells are paralleled to shape the landscape of event. Li'l Bit’s speech invites the audience into the story, meanwhile, her emphases, particularly in the outset of the play is mostly connected with the sense of smell, “the smell of sleeping farms […] the smell of clover and hay […] with the smell of leather” (p. 559). Likewise, the very first sentence that the protagonist, herself, hears is: “Ummm, I love the smell of your hair”. When it comes to the form, in a post-modern play, the olfactory organs, can get involved as much as other senses to lead the scene. Furthermore, the smell can represent the overarching aspect of the play which could be either erotic or paedophilia.

Language has a direct relation to power. This is not only because language shapes the agency and represents the existence of oneself, but also because it is to language that the meaning of the whole world is conceivable. On the other hand, in a post-modern play such as How I Learned to Drive, everything happens within language, therefore, it is inconceivable to understand the events unless the language is being considered. It means language affects everything. Hence, one can observe the conspicuous coincidence of power and language. And in relation to this play; despite the fact that it is intrinsically taking a deconstructive position as it is not relying on any other master narrative, but by using the conventional signs of language, it still acting power, because language is not just presenting but also performing and affecting. “PECK: men are taught to drive with confidence—with aggregation. The road belongs to them. They drive defensively—always looking out for the other guy” (p.583).

The play How I Learned to Drive is a post-modern text written by an activist female writer. Although post-modernism is the epoch of death of God, one can argue that the feminist play writer actively opposes the masculine superiority, in which, to some extent, the presence of God is being acted by men throughout the ages. “Peck: hands on the nine o’clock and three […] your life is in your own two hands. Understand? (Li’l Bit nods)” (p. 583).

 Reference:

Vogel, P. “How I Learned to Drive” in Introduction to Literary Studies Spring 2016. Ed. Achilles S. Western Sydney University. Print.