Play It As It Lays Reflection

Reading Reflection #5: Play It As It Lays

To conclude the reading of Joan Didion’s “Play It As It Lays” that tells a story about some episodes of a life of an actress named Maria, in English’s tongue that is pronounced Mar-eye-ah (4). There are fragments in Maria’s stories and her thoughts on so many things happen in her life. Her schizophrenic tendency and her drug abuse make her life like a juggling. The relationship with people she knows does not help her to have a hold of reality. The guilt of having abortion and a horror of people dying contribute to her nightmarish life.

From the earlier chapters, Maria keeps mentioning about the people who she does not want to be correspondence with anymore or be part of their life. She repulses Carter and the other people in her life that include BZ and Susannah, she says “You are all making me sick (190).” However, she still long for human connection, she makes conversation with a woman who owns a coffee shop. Later, the woman invites Maria to see her house. While Maria there, in the house, she cries and makes the woman asks whether she is pregnant. The uncontrollable emotion probably refers back to the previous time when she had abortion.

The desert is a metaphor to Maria’s life and everybody in the story, dry and barren. The desert is a place where Maria visits

The heat, dryness and snake play tricks on them, they become psychotic and Maria is not the only one having psychological issues. She knows that she has issues and she is not denying that. Maria has her own explanation on the things she do, differ than Helene and Carter as a believer in cause-effect (203). Maria mentions to Carter about a man from the trailer camp who wants to talk to God by talking a walk and ends up dead bitten by a rattlesnake. She asks Carter if God answered the man as her resolution for a