Driver’s Ed is the story of high school student, Remy Marland, who wants nothing else but to receive her driver’s license. Remy is yearning for that piece of laminated paper because it is a symbol of freedom as a young adult. Remy wanting her driver’s license is really her wanting freedom from the child life. But little does she know the adult life is very scary and full of unwanted surprises much like driving is. The first time the students are seen taking a test drive with Remy in the driver’s seat around page 4. The students are frightened and scared of the surroundings going so fast and other cars on the road next to them and oncoming. This is the adult life zooming past so quick and fast and terrifying. Remy wants to dive head first into this life with no preparation or level headed thinking. She is confident and optimistic but not ready yet.
Remy’s confident nature is her strongest point. She longs for freedom but is reminded by her classmates that a license does not mean freedom, it means enslavement.
“Actually,” said Lark, “you will be the family slave. An unpaid, unappreciated beast of burden. Trapped around the clock in the very same car with Henry and Mac. A lifetime occupation of strapping the baby in and out of the car seat…” (5)
This is the negative side to Remy wanting to rush into the life of an adult because she’s running right into oncoming traffic. She is ignoring her blind-spots. Her in impatience will possibly be her downfall. She does not realize she is not free from responsibility, which is one of the most important aspects of being an adult. From the start of Driver’s Ed Remy is established as this character and will have to deal with responsibility in some drastic way or another judging by her confidence and impatience.
I would say the opposing ideas of this story thus far would be freedom vs responsibility. This is shown in a perverse way with the students’ driving teacher Mr. Fielding. Mr. Fielding has clearly long been in the world of adulthood and feels the need to have no responsibility. He does not know his students’ names, he does not care what they do and does not help them while on the road. Mr. Fielding just looks out the window at the scenery and listens to music as the students drive in fear due to lack of knowledge. He is free of all care and responsibility and is a foreshadow of what Remy could become unless a wake up call comes quick. The wake up call is going to be catastrophic to her character (somehow related to driving as well) and will make her grow up and learn true responsibility by the story’s end so that she never becomes a Mr. Fielding, a man who has taken advantage of too much freedom.
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At the end of this blog, you say that freedom versus responsibility is the opposing controlling value. However, as we discussed in class, I believe it’s more of the premise, that it pertains to both the controlling value and the opposing controlling value. And of course, as we discussed, that also leads to the idea of enslavement, which you touched on here. You have the ideas, but you just need to expand on them. I recommend focusing less on the symbolism of the driver’s license or of Mr. Fielding, as you do here (since that is more blog 3) and more on these controlling values. I think the symbolism that you’re talking about here is taking away from the points you were making.
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While this blog post does a good job at discussing certain character motivations and other dynamics at play, I think it could be tied more closely to the idea of controlling values. As Maddie stated in her comment, I think that sections of this post start to verge on discussing intertextuality as opposed to the controlling values present in the novel. Things like a driver’s license are used as part of the symbolic code, which exists independently from the network of cultural values at play. Many of the ideas you discuss definitely lend themselves to the controlling values present in the book, but could use that one extra step connecting them specifically to the method. In the McKee piece we read, he describes the controlling idea as “how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end”. With this in mind, I might suggest discussing and expanding upon those values in this book that specifically trigger these changes.
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This blog does a solid attempt at discussing the various character motivations and why they do what they do, but I feel as if you can deeper explore the different controlling and opposing values. As mentioned in the pervious two comments, it may be wise to step away from discussing symbolism, such as what does it mean for Remy to have a drivers license, since it does distract from the overall blog post. Maybe you could discuss in more detail what it means to be given responsibility as a young person, which is something that you do bring up, but only briefly.
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