Joan Didion writes Play It As It Lays in a satirical way about the Hollywood lifestyle. As it is tantalizing the mind, to think that Hollywood is full of people who have problems of drinking, drug abuse, and sex, which is undeniably happening in the most era of the Hollywood lifestyle since the day one. Fame, success and pouring fortune are hard to handle, practically for anyone who deals with the hazardous lifestyle of Hollywood where relationship does not mean much, includes marriage that usually ruined, if not doomed.
Maria Wyeth is the centralized character in the story. She is an actress, a beaut, a dimming star, a schizophrenic, beyond that, an untraditional loving mother to her daughter, Kate. Like everybody else, she does mistakes in life. Life quandaries overwhelm her, physically and mentally. She is in an impending divorce with Carter. On top of that, Maria aborted her pregnancy and haunted by it for the rest of her adult life. All of these things leave her more vulnerable to her mental state. In the “clinic”, she visualizes how her baby’s life butchered away on the floor of …show more content…
This suicide interpolates how Maria’s existence, at some point means something to somebody else like BZ. When BZ asks Maria to hold him while he passes the transition from this life to the next, the gesture exemplifies, even if someone decides to end their life, does not want to be alone. They are always looking for someone to share the misery of life. BZ’s death causes Maria loses the grasp of reality followed she goes back to the mental institution. Life is a gamble, rolling the dice until the odds favors. That is what Maria learns from her father. Although, her life unlikely could end happily, by observing the lifestyle she lives in. Maria could face a peril from a rattlesnake behind the rock or gets better life. (Didion,