M A IV Sem The Zoo Story

The Zoo Story

Edward Franklin Albee III (born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962). His works are considered well-crafted, often realistic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd. He was greatly influenced by the works of European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Albee continues to experiment in works such as The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (2002).

A member of the Dramatists Guild Council, Albee has received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama—for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). His play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was selected for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize by the award's drama jury, but was overruled by the advisory committee, which elected not to give a drama award at all. Albee was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972. In 1985, Albee was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. In 1999, Albee received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist. He received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement (2005); the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980); as well as the Kennedy Center Honors and the National Medal of Arts (both in 1996). In 2009 Albee received honorary degree a.k.a. "Doctor Honoris Causa" by the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film Arts (NATFA), a member of the Global Alliance of Theater Schools.

He currently is a distinguished professor at the University of Houston, where he teaches an exclusive playwriting course. His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French, Inc.. In 2008, in celebration of Albee's eightieth birthday, a number of his plays were mounted in distinguished Off Broadway venues, including the historic Cherry Lane Theatre. The playwright directed two of his one-acts, The American Dream and The Sandbox there. These were first produced at the theater in 1961 and 1962, respectively.

The Zoo Story, originally titled Peter and Jerry, is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. His first play, it was written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity and dehumanization in a commercial world.

Plot : This one-act play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man, desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories about his life, and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. The action is linear, unfolding in front of the audience in “real time”. The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level.
Eventually, Peter has had enough of his strange companion and tries to leave. Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench and challenges him to fight for his territory. Unexpectedly, Jerry pulls a knife on Peter, and then drops it as initiative for Peter to grab. When Peter holds the knife defensively, Jerry charges him and impales himself on the knife. Bleeding on the park bench, Jerry finishes his zoo story by bringing it into the immediate present: "Could I have planned all this. No... no, I couldn't have. But I think I did." Horrified, Peter runs away from Jerry, whose dying words, "Oh...my...God", are a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication.

Summary

One Sunday afternoon, Peter, an upper-middle-class family man and publishing executive in his mid-forties, is reading a book on a bench. Jerry, a sloppily dressed transient in his late thirties, approaches and announces that he is coming from the Central Park Zoo. Despite Peter’s apparent reluctance to chat, Jerry strikes up a conversation. Jerry’s forward personality quickly begins to annoy Peter – he points out that Peter will likely get cancer from smoking, and implies that Peter is emasculated because he has cats instead of dogs.

Jerry continues to ask Peter questions about his life, his job, and his interests. When Peter finally begins to return Jerry’s questions, Jerry tells him about his miserable apartment in a flophouse on the Upper West Side. He describes his unsavory neighbors and the junk that comprises his possessions – including two empty picture frames. When Peter asks him about the picture frames, Jerry explains that he is completely alone in life. His parents died when he was young, and his only significant romantic relationship was a short liaison he had with another boy when he was a teenager.

Jerry promises to tell Peter about his trip to the zoo, but is sidetracked into telling Peter about his landlady, a drunken woman who constantly propositions him. When she got a dog, Jerry tried to befriend it, but the dog responded only by attacking him. After repeated and repudiated attempts at friendship, Jerry decided to murder the dog by feeding it a poisoned hamburger patty. Although this sickened the dog, it eventually recovered and began to simply leave him alone.
Peter finds this story extremely disturbing, and wonders why Jerry told it to him. Jerry explains that he tries to befriend animals as a gateway to befriending other people.
Peter tries to excuse himself, but Jerry tickles him to keep him from leaving. He then tries to force Peter to move from the bench, and punches him when he refuses. Although Peter initially realizes that Jerry’s behavior is absurd, he gradually becomes more possessive of the bench.
Jerry pulls a knife and insists the men fight for it. This shocks Peter, who refuses to fight. As a gesture of peace, Jerry gives the knife to Peter, who holds the knife out to protect himself. Suddenly, Jerry charges Peter and impales himself on the knife.
Although he is initially hysterical, Jerry soon calms down and accepts his death. He even thanks Peter, using his last energy to wipe Peter’s fingerprints off the knife handle so that Peter will not be accused of his murder. Peter takes his book and dashes off before passers-by notice that Jerry is dying.

Early critics frequently compared The Zoo Story with the work of Samuel Beckett. In fact, when The Zoo Story was first performed in Berlin in 1960, it was part of a double bill with a Beckett one-act play — Krapp’s Last Tape. Indeed, there are a number of important similarities between The Zoo Story and Beckett’s best-known work, Waiting for Godot. Both plays chronicle the relationship between two antagonistic characters who are forced to spend time together, and more importantly, both plays are absurdist in style. Absurdism is closely associated with existential philosophy. In a typical absurdist story, characters must grapple with the meaninglessness of their circumstances — and by extension, of life in general. Absurdist plots are often driven by the emotions the characters experience as they recognize and accept that their lives are meaningless.

Beckett’s work lends itself well to an absurdist interpretation. In Waiting for Godot, the characters are cartoonish and exaggerated, and their predicament is contrived to make a philosophical point. The Zoo Story, on the other hand, is much more realistic in its approach — although it should be noted that realism and absurdism are not mutually exclusive. Realism is a style, and absurdism is a philosophical orientation. Peter and Jerry have quotidian nuanced personalities and quotidian back stories, and the play’s plot, which revolves around an awkward conversation between strangers, is drawn from a common situation of urban life. It could be said, then, that Albee’s work is innovative because it imports an absurdist outlook to the realist dramatic tradition. That it does this with such seeming ease and naturalness is a testament to its greatness.