Maria Wyeth’s high degrees of nihilism and fatalism consume her actions throughout Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays.  It almost seems there is nothing to give meaning to her life.  One thing she does have, however, is her passion for a seemingly aimlessly driving of the freeway.  Probably the easiest way to read this is to associate the driving with a lack of direction and near pointlessness.  As James Wilcox put it in an essay published in Friedman’s collection:

Her freeway driving implies randomness and directionlessness. Each trip is without aim or goal; no one has a relation to another. Initiated each morning at ten with the Corvette and a boiled egg, it is a ritual of eternal renewal, a debased version of the journey west, a parody of the effort to find new passages in a land beyond history (Friedman 72-73).

This can be seen as a valid argument, but upon further inspection it becomes clear that the freeway driving is more than just “directionlessness” as Wilcox and other critics and readers would think of it.  Maria’s ritualistic driving of the freeway is actually the only thing in her life with any sense of direction, and the only the thing in her life, other than Kate, with any meaning.

Understanding the driving in this way is probably best seen through the major passage in the text dealing with the subject, in the first chapter, after the monologues.  In reading this it becomes quite apparent that Maria’s life revolves around her daily 10 a.m. cruise on the freeway: “She dressed every morning with a greater sense of purpose than she had felt in some time” (Didion 15).  She even goes to bed early enough to make sure she’ll wake up in time to be there promptly.  This is something Maria can cling to within the downward spiral she calls her life; it is a reason to get of bed.  Also, it’s clear she is not just driving random roads to random places, not paying attention to the world around her.  On the contrary, all her energy is devoted to where she is and where she is headed—even if a destination just means another freeway to another destination—and the freeway becomes a part of her: “She drove it as a riverman runs a river, every day more attuned to its currents, its deceptions” (16).  The freeway driving is almost seen here as a profession, or a skill.  Maria knows the traffic patterns.  She knows where each freeway leads and what picks up from there.

The driving can appear quite directionless on the surface, but it can be found within the state of mind.  There may not be a specific route mapped out or specific direction that Maria takes to get to some destination.  But there is purpose—which in a sense is direction.  Her life outside the freeway is consumed by images of Carter, Les Goodwin, BZ and Helene.  Life’s turmoil weighs on her constantly.  She longs for Kate.  In a sense, her life outside the freeway is consumed by random, erratic thoughts and psychological malfeasance.  But when her Corvette merges onto the freeway, her mind is put to use, and she does something that at least in her mind requires skill.  This gives purpose; this gives meaning.  It is direction: direction out of the life that she fatalistically sees as being laid out before her and forcing her to play it as it lays.  As Didion herself once put it, this driving is kind of a deep involvement: “‘Mere driving on the freeway,’ Didion writes, ‘is in no way the same as participating in it….Actual participation requires a total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway.  The mind goes clean.  The rhythm takes over’” (Winchell 64).  That is exactly what is being described in Play it as it Lays: a total commitment and immersion in the driving of the freeway.

This raptness also appears in a few other smaller instances within the text.  When the time comes to see the doctor who does clean work, Maria (lucky for her) must take the freeway, specifically the Ventura, which is one she had mentioned earlier when describing the patterns of the California road system in chapter 1.  The “stillness and clarity of the air,” and subsequent altered depth perception, make things jump out at her.  She sees the big red T for miles.  Maria is caught up in the drive, analyzing and overanalyzing.  It is important.  For this moment she doesn’t mention the abortion—she just focuses on the drive, on her passion.  Quite a bit later, in the hypnotist’s office, she does not respond to the maternal image he attempts to put in her head—which theoretically should give her comfort and meaning—but instead is imagining in clear and precise detail driving on the Sunset and staying the left lane so she can turn at New Havana Ballroom.  This gives a clear indication not only about the importance of her freeway driving, but also of the meaning that can be found there.  Finally, the episode where Maria steals Johnny Waters’ Ferrari revisits the freeway theme.  Taking the car and driving the freeway through Los Vegas and to Tonopah was probably light-years better than the night of drinking and sex she just experienced.  It is no extreme example, but still shows her need to get away and be on the freeway, doing what she does best.

All of these scenes hint at meaning, and show purpose and direction.  To further illustrate the meaning within driving the freeway, it is necessary to contrast it with the lack of meaning in the rest of Maria’s life.  Before doing so, it is relevant to acknowledge that Kate also brings meaning, and she is often seen as the only thing that gives Maria meaning: “Indeed, the only thing that holds any meaning for Maria is her maternal love for Kate” (128).  There are other things in Maria’s life—Carter, her friends, past acquaintances, Silver Wells, acting, sex—that could possibly bring some kind of meaning and will to live, but they simply do not.  Maria makes it clear, especially in the flashback to when she still had a family and she insinuated that Carter was not as good of a parent, that Carter cannot bring any kind of significance to her life.  There are some good things—like the credit received for being his wife and the ability to pull strings—but in the overall scheme of things Maria would just prefer to be able to live a life with Kate and be happy.  And she would not need Carter.  As far as friends and acquaintances, Maria does not seem to have a deep care for them like she for Kate and like a person should have for his or her friends.  Maybe Helene could be there to drink with, or BZ talk about nothing with, or any random guy to have sex.  None of this really does anything for her.  All of it, including dwelling upon people in the past such as Ivan Costello but not caring to do too much about it, just furthers her nihilist and fatalistic view of the world.  All of goes back to the gambling metaphor of playing it as it lays.

The freeway driving, on the other hand, is something Maria actually does herself.  She is not forced upon the freeway by her Corvette like she is forced to have rough sex by some of her partners.  She wants to drive the freeway, and she cares deeply about the fact that she does it and how she does it.  In the case of Silver Wells, she dwells upon it occasionally, but stops before really caring since it does not exist anymore.  That embodies quite a lack of meaning in her life.  Next, acting is supposed to be her profession, but she is really a professional freeway driver.  Maria nearly abandons acting altogether.  It is worth noting that in the films Carter directs with her in them, she likes the one where she is just walking across the campus at the end, because “the girl on the screen has a definite knack for controlling her own destiny” (Didion 20).  That is something Maria desires; it would definitely bring some meaning into her life.  But her life really embodies a lack of control, even in the Kate situation, with one exception: driving on the freeway.  It is in those moments where Maria finds herself in control.  She wakes up at that 10 a.m. hour because she wants.  She drives the routes she wants.  She is the master of her Corvette, and she is a master of the freeway.  She is in control.  That control is something she wants so badly.  It is a way to put behind the feelings of being subject to fate, and to gain some meaning in her life.

In a way, this outlandish method of finding control in meaning in Maria’s life can be applied to anyone’s life.  The clichéd, overanalyzed, mind-numbing quest to find what oneself likely becomes a losing battle for most people.  Money, sex, friends, family, and material possessions are all things that can be sought after and achieved on a variety of levels and maybe one can find meaning in some or all.  Maria could not.  But she did find something that made her happy and that she enjoyed doing.  And that gave her the meaning.  That is who she was.  In reading the novel, it is clear to understand that anyone must do the same, but go a few steps beyond.  Maria hits a wall because, although she finds meaning in driving and in hoping to one day have Kate back, she still loses any kind of overall meaning or purpose in her life because she cannot apply those ideas and the meaning to the rest of her life.  When one finds something that gives such a feeling of release, of control, and of purpose; then that is exactly how all aspects of one’s life should be lived.  It is not a simple application, but with practice and determination, it is possible to find such purpose anywhere.

 
Works Cited

Didion, Joan.  Play it as it Lays.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970.

Friedman, Ellen G., ed.  Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations.  Princeton, NJ: Ontario, 1984.

Winchell, Mark Royden.  Joan Didion.  Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.