Play It As It Lays

A hummingbird, according to myth, will die if it stops moving. Maria seems to have internalized this mindset. Like the hummingbird, Maria uses all of her energy to stay in motion. The hummingbird appears in moments when Maria tries to focus on the present and avoid thinking about the past. At the beginning of the novel a version of the phrase “keep my eye on the hummingbird” appears three times (10), suggesting that Maria is trying to convince herself—and the reader—that she is successful in blocking out the past.

The hummingbird only appears at the beginning and end of the novel, in sections that use Maria’s first-person voice. Although most of the novel’s imagery evokes danger or trauma, the hummingbird is a symbol of hope. Even while Maria is institutionalized, she has the potential to be free and achieve the life with her daughter that she desires. 

When the novel opens, Maria’s main activity is driving on the freeway as a way of organizing her life. Maria leaves the house at the same time every morning and drives the same route: “She drove the San Diego to the Harbor, the Harbor up to the Hollywood, the Hollywood to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, the Santa Ana, the Pasadena, the Ventura” (15). The rhythm of this sentence, and the way each route seamlessly leads to the next, symbolizes the calm and regularity the routine imposes on Maria’s daily life.

In addition to symbolizing freedom, the freeway symbolizes danger. Maria drives to avoid her problems; driving on Los Angeles freeways is dangerous and requires all of her concentration. The freeway as a symbol of danger comes into play at Maria’s low point in the narrative, when she is caught speeding in a stolen Ferrari near Las Vegas. Maria had been driving toward Tonopah, Nevada, near the highway where her mother had died in a car accident, representing a desperate attempt at finding closure. No matter how fast or how far she drives, she never finds any answers. The cops who pull her over stop her from running because she cannot stop herself.

The wide, empty space of the desert, primarily associated with Carter, symbolizes the vast emotional distance between Maria and her husband, especially as Carter often has affairs with actresses while he is on set. The desert has personal resonance for Maria because it connects her to Silver Wells. The deserts of Southern California and Southern Nevada are similar, connecting Maria’s current and former lives.

Existentially, the desert signifies the “nothing” that forms the foundation of Maria’s personal philosophy. She lives between these two deserts rather than in them, which symbolizes that her life exists between the two “nothings” of the past and the present.

In the second half of the novel, Maria joins Carter, BZ, and Helene in the desert during one of Carter’s film shoots. There, she encounters a small town like the one in which she grew up. Maria tries in vain to connect with the people she meets, signifying that she no longer fits into either the world of her present or the world of her past. Maria’s sojourn into the desert presages the climax of the novel, in which BZ’s suicide forces her to face her own existential crisis.

After Maria’s abortion, images of pipes and plumbing appear in her nightmares. At the beginning of the novel, Maria says, “I try not to think of dead things and plumbing” (10), both of which she associates with her abortion. The nightmares, in which workers dismantle the pipes in her house and leave them flooded, symbolize Maria’s invaded body.

When Maria visits the Hoover Dam, she “stood finally on a platform over the pipe that carried the river beneath the dam. […] She wanted to stay in the dam, lie on the great pipe itself” (171). In this instance, the pipe of the Hoover Dam represents a strength that Maria does not have; it is too powerful for workmen to dismantle.