Andres1

Andres Pollon Ramos

Jennifer Rodrick

English (115)

November 21, 2018

Maria's marriage with Carter

In the novel “Play It As It Lays” by Joan Didion, he describes in different chapters of

the book about Maria’s marriage with Carter and the toxic relationship that she had with Ivan

Costello. She’s encouraged by her parents to go to New York. While, she’s pursuing her

dream of becoming a famous model, Maria then met her first boyfriend Ivan Costello, a

bastard that depended on Maria’s hard earned cash. The book does concentrate exactly with

things like casual sex or abortion, since Maria only tried to escape from her toxic relationship

with Ivan. Her new marriage begins when Ivan left Maria because he finds out that her

parents died and this influenced on Maria's decision to not continue with her dreams of acting

and modeling and this bothered Ivan because he was ambitious with Maria's money.

Consequently, Maria moved to Hollywood, where she would meet Carter, who would

become her new husband, and that's where her new love story began. Unfortunately, Maria

suffers from loneliness problems and has thinking problems, Maria is very afraid of being

alone or feeling alone forever and having nothing by her side, because the only person she

has is her daughter Kate, who has mental problems and receiving treatment in a hospital.

After Maria only had her daughter Kate, she would meet Carter, whom she would fall in love

with, since she felt lonely and lacking in love and this may refer to Maria's fears of loneliness

and depression and the reason she fell in love with Carter. According with Hara Estroff
 Andres1

Marano in her article “The Dangers of Loneliness” she mentions that “Living alone increases

the risk of suicide for young and old alike”. This article introduces and explains the situation

of Maria and all her fears and she still couldn’t overcome the idea of her previous toxic

relationship and in the way that Ivan Costello treated her and also Maria didn’t overcome the

idea of had lost her parents and so, she didn’t want to lose her only daughter Kate, Maria's

fears were very big. At one point, fears of loneliness, depression, and including love

influenced her new decision to start a new relationship with Carter, Maria believed that he

could take better care of her, protect her, and make sense of her life because apparently she

needed a lot of love from someone in their life.

Therefore, Ivan abused Maria for her money and treated her as an object, and this led

Maria to conclude that another man would treated her equally, but in spite of her toxic

relationship with Ivan and how he made her feel. Maria decided to try a new relationship

with Carter. It’s worth mentioning that Maria after having started her new relationship she

felt a bit insecure and she was afraid that Carter would treat her as Ivan did. After, when

Maria has spending a lot of time in her relationship with Carter, began to have many sexual

encounters with different men and this is caused by the depression she felt of being alone and

because she couldn't spend all the time with her daughter Kate, whom Maria loves a lot and

appreciates so much. Maria feels that Kate is the only one who has and that Kate always

needs Maria and this leads Maria to anxiety and the desire to feel someone's love. Since

apparently, she wasn’t happy with Carter’s loves because Maria felt she needed more than

Carter could give her.

Maria's tendency is that she lives with a very disturbed mind because without any

reason she starts having many adventures with other men, Maria didn’t worry about her
 Andres1

relationship with Carter and much less how other people would see her, so Maria’s tendency

is that she didn’t think about any of her acts that she committed and because her mind played

with her by making her feel lonely and miserable. According to the article written by Erica

Cirino: “The Effects of Depression on the Brain. What Is Depression?”. She said “Some

people may experience mild depression only once in their lives, while others have several

severe episodes over their lifetime. This more serious, long-lasting and intense form of

depression is known as major depressive disorder (MDD). It may also be referred to as

clinical depression or major depression”. This quote talks about that most of the people

experience once or more times in their lives the depression based on their histories that they

have lived suffering of love, loss of a family member, ending their courtship, abuse, and

among other things, all these things lead to people to disturbed their brain and thought

disorders as was the case with Maria.

In the quote from the previous article it can refer to the way Maria thought and what

her mind led her to do with all her encounters with those men starting with Les Goodwin, a

man who was married according to the book says that Maria slept with him one night. Then

she meets BZ, with whom she had sex as well and, finally, I believe that a friend of the

family, as a result of her adventures she had with several men, Maria gets pregnant and is

sure that her baby is from Les Goodwin and then she does not know how to deal with this

situation and in what way she will tell Carter that she is pregnant from another man. When

Maria finds a way to tell Carter that she is pregnant with another man, he forces her to abort,

this is the exact point where Maria's mental disturbance begins to get worse and her brain

starts to get confused more than it used to be and this a point also in which Maria and Carter
 Andres1

and their marriage begin to get complicated and where both have many fights for Maria's

pregnancy.

Carter begins to see the behavior of Maria when they reached the conclusion of the

abortion, Maria begins to show a severely uncontrolled behavior, begins to take sleeping

pills, symptoms of many nerves and is confused when she talks because she loses with her

own words. According an article by Hara Estroff Marano: “Anxiety and Depression

Together” she said that “Cognitive-

behavioral therapy (CBT) gets at response

patterns central to both conditions. And the

drugs most commonly used against

depression, the SSRIs, or selective serotonin

reuptake inhibitors, have also been proved

effective against an array of anxiety disorders, from social phobia to panic and post-traumatic

stress disorder (PTSD). Which drug a patient should get is based more on what he or she can

tolerate rather than on symptoms.”. This article may refer to Maria's relationship and the

behavior that Maria began to have because she had to deal with many more things and she

just wanted to find someone's love. But she felt that way because she did all his adventures

with many men, she didn’t realize the risks and those methods were not the best solution

Therefore, she had to pay the consequences of her actions with her relationship

because when Carter realized of her pregnancy, their relationship began to weaken and they

had many more conflicts, and Maria had a lot of depression and too many thoughts of

loneliness. and the sadness did not find any sense in her life and Carter for a moment tried to

fix things with her, but Maria finds herself in a very difficult situation in which she feels that
 Andres1

Carter couldn’t understand and help her, she felt that all her dreams and desires were break

and they will never come true. Then, at the end of the novel, Maria imagines her life even

more lonely because Carter begins to move further away from her, but although Carter still

loves her and wants to try one last time to marry her, but I guess they divorced because in the

novel Maria just needs someone to not feel alone and miserable, but Carter doesn’t get away

from her so easily and starts to bait Maria so much, and then she starts to see that Carter starts

to become a reflection like Ivan Costello.

But at the end of the novel in the book, Maria tried to escape from a toxic relationship

she had with Ivan, and thought that Carter might be different and at the beginning of her new

marriage with Carter everything was nice and worked well, but time passed and everything

changed and Maria felt more guilty than ever of all her misfortune for not taking care of her

marriage and because Carter became a bad person

because of the way he saw her and treated her,

everything had changed in Carter because he

looked like Ivan. This refers to her adventures that

she had with men, Carter already saw her as a

prostitute and as an object and then the relationship she had with Carter also became toxic

and she just tried to escape from that relationship again, although she knew that she was

going to be alone again or the fact of feeling unhappy and not having anyone at her side to

love her, take care of her and protect her. Carter loved her, but he was not the same with her

because of the treatment he gave her and how Maria felt with him, so they divorced and

Maria was even more lonely and sad.

 Andres1

At the end of the novel in the book, Maria comes to the conclusion that her life is

worthless and that she has lost everything, from her dreams to her desires and goals. Lastly,

Maria got into a very critical point of thinking about her life isn’t worth it and how sad it is

and she feels in that way because she also feels that she has already lost everything and that

now she has nothing to get ahead, so she talks to the last person who was BZ and explains

her situation, BZ told Maria that he’s also going through the same thing and at the end of this

novel according to the book, Maria commits suicide and her story ends sadly.
 Andres1

Work Cited Page

Marano, Hara Estroff. “The Dangers of Loneliness”. Published July 1, 2003 - last reviewed

on June 9, 2016. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200307/the-dangers-

loneliness

Cirino, Erica. The Effects of Depression on the Brain: What Is Depression? Medically

reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, PhD, PMHNP-BC on February 29, 2016.

https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/effects-brain#1

Hara Estroff, Marano. “Anxiety and Depression Together”. Published October 1, 2003 -

last reviewed on June 9, 2016.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200310/anxiety-and-depression-together

Didion, Joan. Play It As It Lays. Farrar, Stratus and Giroux, 1970. New York.