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Chapter 45
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Play It As It Lays, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Meaninglessness
Gender Inequality and Identity
Loss and Recovery
Superficiality
Summary
Analysis
Maria recognizes “the signs” of “the idle lonely”: they arrive at the grocery store on Saturday evenings. They purchase only one lamp chop, cat food, and a newspaper. They have just a slight sign of “vulnerable tightness around the mouth.” To avoid looking like these women, Maria buys food for a full household: gallons of juice, pasta, huge boxes of laundry detergent. Meanwhile, Maria eats only cottage cheese.
Maria knows she is quickly joining the ranks of “the idle lonely” but thinks she can redeem herself in the eyes of her superficial society if her appearance suggests otherwise. She stocks up on food to give the impression that she is happy and has people in her life. Maria is stuck in a self-defeating situation: she’s lonely because she’s surrounded by superficial people who are incapable of forming genuine, communicative connections, yet in her efforts to combat this loneliness, she becomes as disingenuous as the very people she despises.
Themes
