Describe what happens when Ruth tries to learn how to drive. What does she decide as a result ?

As James observed his mother trying to learn how to drive, the irony of the attempt highlights Ruth's figurative death and rebirth. As a girl in Suffolk, she had known how to drive perfectly, but as Ruth McBride Jordan, the mother of twelve, she no longer knew how to drive. Ruth's mother's identity underwent a kind of death when she left Suffolk, lost her mother, and married. James's motivation for writing the book is to recover a sense of his mother's former identity, in order for him to better understand who she was and is, thus giving him a fuller awareness of himself. While death signals a new beginning, it does not negate the fact of the life that has been lived.

As James observed his mother trying to learn how to drive, the irony of the attempt highlights Ruth's figurative death and rebirth. As a girl in Suffolk, she had known how to drive perfectly, but as Ruth McBride Jordan, the mother of twelve, she no longer knew how to drive. Ruth's mother's identity underwent a kind of death when she left Suffolk, lost her mother, and married. James's motivation for writing the book is to recover a sense of his mother's former identity, in order for him to better understand who she was and is, thus giving him a fuller awareness of himself. While death signals a new beginning, it does not negate the fact of the life that has been lived.

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