Driving and the driver’s license function as a motif highlighting the theme of The Dismissal of Elder People’s Agency. The novel begins when Pepper’s children take her license away after a minor fender-bender, an act that strips her of her independence and forces her into Vista View, a place where “no one [...] has a driver’s license anymore” (26). This loss and the subsequent move into a retirement community represent society’s tendency to infantilize the elderly, treating them as incapable of managing their own lives and making decisions for their own well-being. For much of the novel, Pepper’s inability to drive emphasizes her powerlessness; she is dependent on her children or the Vista View van, her freedom of movement severely restricted. Her world shrinks to what is within walking distance, reinforcing the feeling that her life is contracting.

Pepper’s decision to retake her driving test and get a new license marks the climax of her journey to reclaim her identity. This act is a rebellion against her children’s control and the societal assumption that aging is a one-way street of diminishing capabilities. Armed with her new license, Pepper becomes an “abortion fairy,” using her reclaimed freedom to help others exercise their own bodily autonomy. As the activist Evangeline predicts, “being the only senior citizen you know to renew a driver’s license isn’t even going to make the list of most impressive things about you” (276). Although Pepper has overcome more significant obstacles, regaining her driver’s license represents the freedom to choose one’s own path, take risks, and live a life of purpose and defiance at any age.

The titular symbol of enormous wings represents the paradoxical nature of Pepper’s miraculous pregnancy, which is simultaneously a transcendent, life-altering event and a monstrous, isolating burden. The symbol originates from a Gabriel García Márquez story about a very old, unkempt man with enormous wings who is discovered and treated not as a divine angel but as a circus freak to be caged and mocked. Pepper sees a direct parallel to her own experience as an elderly woman whose improbable pregnancy makes her a public spectacle. People do not see her as a person undergoing a medical crisis; instead, they project their own beliefs onto her, treating her as a holy vessel, a political symbol, or a biological anomaly. The wings, therefore, symbolize a condition that elevates her into the public consciousness while also trapping her in a cage of others’ expectations and judgments.

While initially a symbol of her burden, the wings evolve to represent a source of protective power. When Pepper and her granddaughter Lola are confronted by aggressive protesters outside the abortion clinic, Pepper feels she must “unfurl [her] enormous wings” to shield Lola (240). In this key moment, she consciously embraces the intimidating and unnatural aura of her condition, turning the very thing that makes her a target into a weapon of defense. The wings symbolize her acceptance of her strange fate and her ability to transform a personal burden into a formidable expression of maternal and grandmotherly love, asserting her agency in a world that has tried to strip it from her.