Isolation And Symbolism In Edward Albee's The Zoo Story

At the beginning of Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story, Peter is approached by Jerry, who leaves an first impression that he is eccentric by repeatedly shouting that he has been to the zoo. In actuality, Jerry has already mapped a plan in which to free himself from a life of isolation and loneliness using Peter. The result of his mother, father, and aunt dying has led to his lifestyle of a social recluse from a young age, which lends to Jerry constantly antagonizing Peter. An obvious showing of this antagonizing is apparent when Jerry tells Peter that he could let Peter’s house cats loose and eat the birds, leading to their sickness death. The isolation does not seem as apparent until Jerry begins his tirade of wanting to kill his landowner’s dog. The two can both be considered alone, but different forms. Jerry and Peter are actually caged animals wanting to find their place among the zoo.

A subtle absurdity can be detected very early in the play, as evidenced when Jerry points out to Peter that he will most likely form mouth cancer from smoking his pipe, and that he will have to wear a prosthesis. In a normal situation, a person does not say something as graphic as this after meeting someone for the first time, especially mentioning that the device was installed on Freud after “they took one whole side of his jaw away” (Albee 13). This line from Jerry is the first step in unseating Peter from his seemingly dead life and slowly rearranging him into Jerry’s escape from isolation. Most notably, Jerry moves on from describing to Peter his early life from his room to the landlord and truly unwinds his true character when he describes the dog.

The emptiness of Jerry’s life is reflected by the empty frames in Jerry’s apartment. Had he su...

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... human being exhibits defensive, animalistic behavior towards their possessions, namely the bench which Peter has claimed for himself.

Despite Peter being in shock after seeing Jerry impale himself on his own knife, he has “defended his honor,” but “lost his bench” (Albee 49). The seed that Jerry has planted into Peter from the very beginning has now begun to bear fruit. Jerry is no longer alone and alienated, and as such Peter is no longer passive and demasculinized, or a so called “vegetable”. Now that the two have what they were looking for all along, the story’s ending can infer that animals such as Peter and Jerry require much effort in order to be able to understand each other, as they both come from different walks of life. Although both have been alone in a number of ways, it is only through meeting each other that they are not considered alone any longer.