Often we can find reoccurring themes that echo throughout out lives. Joan Didion’s novel, Play It As It Lays, follows the descent of Maria Wyeth, as she attempts to avoid flipping over any rocks in fear of what may be revealed. Born in a town now extinct, Maria attempts to assimilate into Hollywood culture—partake in the reality-bending nature of film and keep safe from the rattlesnakes woven into her desert centered past. However, as the novel progresses it becomes apparent that decay can only be subverted for so long. Growing tired of the never-ending parties, the perpetually heated pools, the necessity to assert identity only through outward expression paired with the unreliable perspectives of those around her, Maria begins to withdrawal from the game.
Play It As It Lays explores the variance between external and internal truth. This examination calls into question the …show more content…
The repetition of snake references throughout the novel, often in moments of anxiety and delusion (60), but also in the lessons her parents taught her. As aforementioned, one of the two lessons Maria learned as a child regarded how to avoid revealing a rattlesnake. Maria’s mother reinforces this lesson by making Maria read her own copy of the American Red Cross Handbook, in order for Maria to know how to heal a rattlesnake bite (80-81). What the rattlesnakes signify becomes clear in Maria’s inability to read newspapers in fear of what they would reveal: “rattlesnakes in the playpen, the peril, the unspeakable peril in the everyday” (100). Snakes resemble the unavoidable, necessary decay of life. Although Maria attempts to escape them, tries to convert to Hollywood’s ideological definition of truth as something artificial and explicit, she is unable to shake what she has inherited. The snakes, originating from her childhood, follow her as a way to indicate that no matter how hard she tires; she cannot escape her internal