How do the final chapter of Play It as It Lays connect to the opening of the novel?

Answer 1

The introduction and conclusion of the novel are connected because it “starts at the end”. In the first chapter the reader is immediately aware that Maria has been "institutionalized” (as they referred to mental health hospitalizations in the 1960s).

As I recall, the story of Maria’s life before this hospitilation unfolds in the following chapters. After her own career in Hollywood failing, the glamorous lifestyle she was so desperately searching for was in reality, a gloomy story of depressed woman in a fake society, an era with drugs, sex and devastation. Maria, more specifically, as she mentally struggles with depression, heads down a road of drugs, promiscuity, drinking and a life she often refers to as “empty”, a life that means “nothing”.

Maria, who desperately seeks love and affection is unable to receive this from her very own daughter- who is for an unknown reason incapable of requiting love and ends up institutionalized at the age of four. So, Maria gets pregnant again but is forced by her own husband to seek out an illegal abortion- another traumatic event- adding to Maria’s belief that life is empty and she sees no purpose in the world or people which surround her. As the story continues to unfold Maria becomes progressively more detached, more void and obviously verging on destruction.

At the end of the novel Maria ends up hospitalized again reflecting to the reader how the existence of life is so useless and empty. Her final thoughts are of her telling the reader that she knows what “nothing” means but she keeps on playing. These final lines bring the reader’s thoughts to the title of the novel and back to the introduction, Maria institutionalized, living a meaningless life and accepting it for what it is, full of nothingness and emptiness.