The play How I Learned to Drive focuses on the incestuous affair between a young girl, Li'l Bit, and her Uncle Peck. The play spans years and consists of several flashbacks with an adult Li'l Bit acting as the narrator. A coming of age story, the play doesn't offer a condemnation of Uncle Peck's behavior. Instead, Li'l Bit seeks to understand it and forgive it. She also feels grateful to her Uncle, as he taught her how to drive, which gave her freedom.
In King Lear, the title character brings about his downfall when he falls for the false, flattering words of two of his daughters, Goneril and Regan, and disowns his other daughter, Cordelia, when she speaks the truth. The brutal play examines the politics of running a kingdom as well as the politics involved in family life, as Goneril and Regan betray their father and themselves in an attempt to get power. Although a tragedy, the play offers a small glimmer of hope at the end, when Lear reconciles with Cordelia.
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer is a poem that extols the virtues of true connection to the natural world. In the poem, the speaker is listening to an astronomer explain things with charts and figures and diagrams, but finds himself sick of such technical things; it isn't until he goes outside and actually looks at the stars that he feels at peace. This poem explores themes of spirituality, true wisdom, and nature.