Don’t Worry, This Won’t Hurt. Oh, Wait. There’s a Snake.
In 1970 American author Joan Didion wrote a novel that she titled Play It as It Lays. The novel revolves around Maria, a failing Hollywood actress and the downfall of her life. Didion wrote the book in first person and close third person, giving the reader a personal and impersonal view of Maria’s life. In the novel, Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, Didion uses both imagery and symbolic repetition of snakes in order to prove that everyone must endure their own inevitable tragedies in life, specifically in relation to death or great suffering. The first time Didion makes a reference to the snake is on the very first page. The first reference, “Why should a coral snake need two glands …show more content…
However, after her divorce and forced abortion, her life took a turn for the worst that left her in a constant state of depression. Her ex-husband, Carter, was one of the many people who tried to get her back to living a happier life. One day he asked her to come out and watch him film, instead she chose to stay indoors and “studied the deputy sheriff’s framed photographs of highway accidents, imagined the moment of impact, tasted blood in her own dry mouth and searched the grain of the photographs with a magnifying glass for details not immediately apparent, the false teeth she knew must be on the pavement, the rattlesnake she suspected on the embankment.” Even when looking at deaths that were caused by cars and poor driving decisions, Maria still suspected there to be a snake on the scene. This proves Maria’s fixed association with snakes and death. It does not specify that she found a snake or two in the pictures, it says that she actively looked for them in the multiple photographs that she had. Where most people saw the cars being the reason people died or got hurt, Maria assumes that snakes played a role in their death. This strengthens the emphasis Didion places on Maria’s depressed mind that has a fascination for snakes and their ever common appearance in situations revolving around death and …show more content…
As a child, one of the only two lessons she claims to have learned from her father was that any time you turned over a stone, you were likely to find a rattlesnake. Due to the quality of her life, she made the connection of snakes to be the necessary evils in situations to mean death and suffering. This connection led to the recurring snake motif throughout the novel, Play It as It Lays, by Joan Didion. Snakes appear multiple times throughout the novel as well as the cover, on which it is the focal point. The use of this motif is important to the emphasis on non-explicitly stated moments in Maria’s life in which she deems them to be the worst of both her life and the world around
In 1970 American author Joan Didion wrote a novel that she titled Play It as It Lays. The novel revolves around Maria, a failing Hollywood actress and the downfall of her life. Didion wrote the book in first person and close third person, giving the reader a personal and impersonal view of Maria’s life. In the novel, Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, Didion uses both imagery and symbolic repetition of snakes in order to prove that everyone must endure their own inevitable tragedies in life, specifically in relation to death or great suffering. The first time Didion makes a reference to the snake is on the very first page. The first reference, “Why should a coral snake need two glands …show more content…
However, after her divorce and forced abortion, her life took a turn for the worst that left her in a constant state of depression. Her ex-husband, Carter, was one of the many people who tried to get her back to living a happier life. One day he asked her to come out and watch him film, instead she chose to stay indoors and “studied the deputy sheriff’s framed photographs of highway accidents, imagined the moment of impact, tasted blood in her own dry mouth and searched the grain of the photographs with a magnifying glass for details not immediately apparent, the false teeth she knew must be on the pavement, the rattlesnake she suspected on the embankment.” Even when looking at deaths that were caused by cars and poor driving decisions, Maria still suspected there to be a snake on the scene. This proves Maria’s fixed association with snakes and death. It does not specify that she found a snake or two in the pictures, it says that she actively looked for them in the multiple photographs that she had. Where most people saw the cars being the reason people died or got hurt, Maria assumes that snakes played a role in their death. This strengthens the emphasis Didion places on Maria’s depressed mind that has a fascination for snakes and their ever common appearance in situations revolving around death and …show more content…
As a child, one of the only two lessons she claims to have learned from her father was that any time you turned over a stone, you were likely to find a rattlesnake. Due to the quality of her life, she made the connection of snakes to be the necessary evils in situations to mean death and suffering. This connection led to the recurring snake motif throughout the novel, Play It as It Lays, by Joan Didion. Snakes appear multiple times throughout the novel as well as the cover, on which it is the focal point. The use of this motif is important to the emphasis on non-explicitly stated moments in Maria’s life in which she deems them to be the worst of both her life and the world around