Radio, as Li’l Bit jokes in a driving lesson with Uncle Peck, is the most important part of the car. Of course, she doesn’t mean this literally, but for her radio represents an element of personal choice in a world in which much of that choice has been stripped away. Using the radio, she can play the music that best speaks to her and most reflects who she is at different stages in life. But the actual act of tuning the radio also echoes the way Li’l Bit’s memories function: they come at her thick and fast, like radio stations do when turning the dial. This is gestured to clearly in the play’s closing scene, when Li’l Bit adjusts her radio before driving away. For a moment, the radio plays back some of the play’s previous lines—things that people have said that affected her negatively at the time—before settling on the music that she wants to listen to. This act, then, shows the way Li’l Bit has chosen not to pretend that her traumatic memories do not exist, but to choose to focus elsewhere—on the future.
Radio Symbol Timeline in How I Learned to Drive
