Analysis of Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story”

Edward Albee shows that however civilized humans believe themselves to be, their interactions still contain very primitive and animalistic aspects.  Albee displays this in The Zoo Story by presenting Peter, an upper middle class, civilized, New York resident and pairing him with the lower class, somewhat crazy character of Jerry.  In their brief conversation, Peter is reduced to primitive behavior ultimately killing Jerry only to defend a Central Park bench.  In addition to the dehumanization of Peter, the subject of Jerry’s ‘monologue’ is based on his different interactions with animals including his trip to the the zoo referenced in the play’s title.  Finally, Albee uses the setting of New York City to provide an analogy between human and animal societies.  

Edward Albee must have been very interested in the characteristics of human interaction because he himself had a very turbulent relationships throughout his life.  He was adopted into a family who “enjoyed wealth and social position from the [their] interest in a national chain of theaters” (Academy of Achievement).  Albee enjoyed theater from a young age but even with his family’s investment in the arts, “his adoptive parents expected him to pursue a more conventional business or professional career” (Academy of Achievement).  He decided to go against his parents wishes and pursue an artistic occupation resulting in his expulsion from two high schools and his dropping out of college.  Finally free from his parents at age twenty,  Albee moved to Greenwich Village where he would, “never [see] his father again, and would not see his mother for 17 years” (Academy of Achievement).  After ten years of odd jobs and some unsuccessful fictional writing and poetry, he produced his first major work: The Zoo Story.  Living a life with such unconventional relationships up until this point, Albee must have been greatly intrigued by human psychology and interaction eventually writing an exploration of these things in The Zoo Story.

In the beginning of the play, Albee shows the two characters’ differences by emphasizing Peter’s normal characteristics as well as Jerry’s abnormal characteristics.  With each new question Jerry proposes to Peter, more becomes clear about each character.  About Peter, it is discovered that he is relatively well off financially and otherwise.  He has a wife, two daughters and multiple family pets.  As for Jerry, his character is shaped by the types of questions he is willing to ask a complete stranger.  He asks Peter personal questions such as why Peter is not going to have any more kids;  he asks, “Is it your wife?” (Albee).  Jerry also asks how much money Peter makes a year and where he lives.  But perhaps more informative is when Jerry tells Peter about himself.  He lists to Peter the entire inventory of his apartment, tells him that he is homosexual, where he lives and that both his parents are dead with his mom being an adulterer and walking out on his dad just before her death.  Jerry’s personality is further revealed by the strange phrases he says such as in this exchange when the two are discussing Peter’s pets: “JERRY: Do they carry disease? The birds. / PETER: I don’t believe so. / JERRY: That’s too bad. If they did you could set them loose in the house and the cats could eat them and die, maybe” (Albee).  All this information “pours out of [Jerry] in a flow of wild, scabrous, psychotic details” (Atkinson), ultimately giving the impression of Jerry as crude, lonely and mostly crazy.  

With this introductory description, the contrast in civility between the two characters becomes clear.  They are almost so different in fact that Jerry can be described as more of an animal and Peter as more of a human or in other words, two totally different species.  As a civilized human, Peter has a nice life and does not necessarily want to change it.  He seems to have control over most of the things in his life and could change them if he wanted or needed to because he has the means to do so.  In contrast, Jerry does not seem happy about his condition when he examines it.  He describes his living conditions by saying, “I live on the top floor; rear; west. It’s a laughably small room, and one of my walls is made of beaverboard; this beaverboard separates my room from another laughably small room” (Albee).  When Peter replies, “It doesn’t sound a very nice place … where you live,” Jerry responds in agreement.  Jerry is trapped in his apartment like an animal is trapped in its cage and interacts with the other unpleasant tenants.  Jerry elaborates to Peter about the other tenants or ‘animals’ in his zoo-like apartment and from the description, “each one of Jerry’s neighbors is like an animal put on show, a queer, exotic animal which nobody really knows much about” (Zoo Station).  As if further blurring the line between human and animal interaction Jerry in his story focusses mainly on his relationship with one particular occupant of the apartment, the landlady’s dog, who is literally an animal.

When Jerry talks about the meeting between him and the dog, he describes them in great detail as he would an interaction with another human, showing that human and animal interactions are not so different to Jerry.  He even hints that his personal disposition towards both humans and animals is similar when he says, “animals are indifferent to me … like people” (Albee).  He goes on to describe how he met the dog, how he had some problem with the dog and how him and the dog resolved that problem: all common element of an interaction between humans as well.  Albee does not only put in Jerry’s story of the dog to show how their meeting is like that of two humans, but also to add more metaphorical context in which the main conflict will take place.

This metaphorical context of the play is the multiple references to interactions between animals and humans.  This includes the title The Zoo Story.  The title can have many explanations within the story.  On the one hand, it describes the literal story of Jerry visiting the zoo, interacting with the animals and seeing how they interact with each other.  On the other hand, it refers to the story of Jerry’s apartment: the ‘caged’ tenants and the landlady’s dog.  Finally though, it can describes the interactions between Jerry and Peter that day and, in a broader sense, all interactions between humans of different culture or class in New York City.  

The interaction between Peter and Jerry can be compared to a zoo in that each person is analogous to a different animal because each is so different in his personality and social class.  Central Park provides the enclosure of the zoo because it it a natural place totally set off from the rest of the city.  Peter and Jerry, two different animals, are placed in the same enclosure together almost as an experiment by Albee and the result is interesting to say the least.  

The experiment comes to a climax when Jerry’s story about the zoo is stopped abruptly when he decides that he wants the bench that Peter is sitting on.  It is a very primitive and unexpected decision and Jerry does not put much thought into the reason of it, but instead just starts pushing and punching Peter off of the bench.  Peter through his natural instincts, ‘becomes an “animal” in the end of the play, forced by Jerry to fight for his dignity, ‘his bench’ and his comfortable upper-middle-class values” (Zoo Station).  In any situation such as New York, where  very different people live in close proximity to each other, there are multiple potential interactions just like the one between Peter and Jerry, and it is not unlike interactions between different animals in the wild.  In both instances, intuitions and primitive impulses are the main motivator for actions between the subjects, and in both instances the interactions happen between very different beings.  In short, big multicultural cities such as New York City share many characteristics with natural animal environments.  

In The Zoo Story, Edward Albee provides an interesting and novel way of looking at human interaction. At the start of their conversation, Peter says jokingly, “And am I the guinea pig for today?” (Albee).  Ironically, Peter and Jerry do appear to be part of some ‘experiment’ Albee has drawn up as a study of human interaction.  The experiment results in death: a significant event yet common in all animal life.  In addition to end result, the intermediate interactions show multiple animalistic characteristics.  Sometimes it is easy to forget that humans are still animals and no matter how civilized, their interactions can still reflect their primitive animal instincts.  

Works Cited

Academy of Achievement. A Biography of Edward Albee. Web. 2/1/12.

<http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/alb1bio-1>

Albee, Edward. The Zoo Story. Web. 1/15/12 <http://www.douban.com/group/topic/7721039/>

Atkinson, Brooks. “Theatre: A Double Bill Off Broadway.” New York Times. 15 January 1960.

Zoo Station. “Actual Meaning of the Title (a post-reading analysis).” Web. 1/15/12.

<http://zootale.blogspot.com/2008/02/actual-meaning-of-title-post-reading.html>