Text Analysis Practicum

English-German

Course Instructor: Dr. Lorelei Caraman

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Edward Albee: The Zoo Story (Play)

Edward Franklin Albee (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright known for works
such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(1962). His works are often considered as well-crafted, realistic examinations of the modern
condition.1
The Zoo Story presents the dialogue between two men which belong in different social
classes. The play debuts with the characterization between the two protagonists, Peter and
Jerry. The author lets us to establish the contrasts between them.
From the beginning, the absurd is present in the play when Jerry invades Peters personal
space. They do not know each other, but Jerry acts like he is a friend of him which, clearly,
disturbs Peter. Jerrys approach was out of place because even that he knows he disturbs
Peter, he does not care and still keep talking. Peter is trying to be polite because that is the
way he was raised and this is one of the multitudes of differences between them. He also
keeps his animal instinct hide because he is not aware of it but Jerry will succeed to make
him know about his real masculinity, which Jerry thinks that Peter is no longer in possession
of it.
Jerry had been trying to have a conversation with a human being, that is why he keeps asking
Peter a lots of questions. He might not be asking random questions, but in fact he maybe
wants to irritate and anger the man that he believes Peter is.

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The reason that he repeats the fact that he went to the zoo it reveals their own animalistic
sides because Jerry believes that a persons relationship with animals reveals information
about that persons character. Another meaning to the idea of zoo is that the people are in
cage, which would be the city, and it keeps us under control but we are nothing more than
animals. The zoo, for real animals, it is a limited world which prevents them from losing the
control.
Jerry is desperate to confess his pain, he really needs to talk and it does not matter who the
person is, even if he hates the people, the world, because he knows he cannot have that
conversation with an animal because he is aware it would not understand him. Jerrys
observation is that he does not understand how animals can interact because everyone [was]
separated by bars from everyone else, the animals for the most part from each other, and
always the people from the animals.
Due to his dark past, he does not know how to manage a conversation, like in his with Peter
because he is selfish and pursues one goal: to be understood and find somebody to set him
free. The lack of communication drove him crazy and tried to kill a dog because he could not
stand him. He failed and he felt sorry about his actions.
He is mentally destroyed and he aspires to absolute. He got sick of the world he is living
within and tries to find that one person who can release him from all. He is playing with
Peters mind and misleads him just to arouse his interest by telling him all his stories about
his life. He wanted to be sure that Peter will not run away from him. From Jerrys stories we
know that he is poor, socially isolated and haunted by a traumatic past which would be three
motives to commit suicide.
Jerry and Peter are antithetical and we can see it from their lives. One of them is under
control because he has a family and the other one is more like a wild spirit and initially he is
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free but he cannot enjoy it because of its lonely and dark past. He is been lonely for so long
that he does not know what he should do anymore in his life.
Jerrys death suggests an act of martyrdom because he is sacrificing himself to teach Peter a
lesson about the importance of human connection in the alienating urban environment.
The animalistic instinct of Jerry leaded him to death. He planned all this from the beginning
and he was hoping to find the right person to do it. By this, the author shows us that we are
more animalistic than we initially appear.
The murder weapon, which Peter used to defense himself from Jerry it is more animalistic, it
looks like an animal fang. Peter was shocked by Jerrys action by pulling himself into the
knife and being so happy about it. Jerry felt released because he finally escape from the world
which he hate it so much and no one would or could understand what he really felt.
The real question here is: did Peter feel freed from the cage after stabbing Jerry? Jerry felt
freed because one of his final words were: I came unto you . . . and you have comforted me.
Dear Peter and he told Peter that he is an animal too .
In the end, the play suggests that no matter how we live or where we live, we still have
animal instincts in us because from the beginning of world our ancestors interacted with
animals. They learned to live by their behavior, but in time we civilized but we are still
animals inside.