The Thing about Albee

“Now you pick up that knife and you fight with me. You fight for your self-respect; you fight for that goddamned bench.”

The Zoo Story by Edward Albee is an unexpectedly haunting play, featuring a young man—Jerry—estranged by society. The play tells of alienation, the endless pursuit of friendship, as well as delving into the ideas of possessiveness and territorialism. Jerry, who suffers what Albee dubs “a fall from physical grace”, slips in and out of absurdity, trying to communicate his resentment and loneliness. Peter, in his early forties, is essentially the everyday ‘family man’, slowly consumed by the dreary humdrum of life. In fact, he could be described as Jerry’s victim. The Zoo Story spotlights their verbal exchange in Central park, eventually coming to a disastrous, startling climax, leaving readers mostly confused, and contemplating the deeper meaning to this absurdist piece.

         In terms of alienation from society, Jerry faces dismissal in both his human and non-human interactions. To begin with, when he first strikes up conversation with Peter, it’s apparent to readers that the latter is subtly trying to make him leave, given Jerry vague, if not truncated responses. Jerry persists, obliging an apprehensive Peter into a bizarre discussion. Another example would be the dog—perhaps a metaphor for society—not only rejects, but also assaults Jerry. He fleetingly tolerates Jerry’s presence when he has food in his mouth, which seems to evoke a courteous indifference within him. However, once he has wolfed down his fare, he proceeds to attack Jerry. Jerry also seems to isolate himself, as is the case with his landlady, who he regularly cons into leaving him alone by reminding her of the fictional ‘wild encounters’ they’ve been having. Given that Albee’s play is an absurdist piece, an analysis is always more of a guess. Bearing homosexual tendencies, and given the play’s temporal scope, it can be expected that Jerry must have faced some sort of marginalization due to his sexuality. Perhaps the fact that he is aware of his mental ‘volatility’ and social inability makes life feel meaningless, so he instinctively distances himself from others.

         I think that despite that the idea of ‘searching for friendship’ opposes that of ‘isolation’, it doesn’t matter. The Zoo Story is an absurdist, play and thus doesn’t need to conform to rules of literary coordination. Jerry’s moral tenets and character are discordant, but are both what makes his character distinctive. In struggling to create a basic bond between the rabid dog and himself, he searches for a companion, eventually loving the dog. By talking to Peter and sharing personal stories with him (even committing suicide in front of him), he tries to form an emotional bond and make a lasting impact. Jerry recurrently sleeps with prostitutes, and yet is never able to establish any sort of long-term relationship with them. Jerry’s sexual activity is frequent but meaningless, and yet he cannot help but sleep with more prostitutes, relishing in fleeting moments of lust, only to return to a common emptiness. His pursuit of companionship is so frantic that he turns to inanimate objects and animals to connect to. During his extended soliloquy in The Zoo Story, Jerry talks about a person having to “have some way of dealing with something” citing a bed and a cockroach as options, and discarding the mirror. Jerry, despite himself is self-loathing and desperately alone. At one point he attempts to kill the dog that lives to hate him, whilst concurrently craving its approval. In his own warped manner, Jerry pursues friendship in almost all of his human—or non-human for that matter—interactions, though continuously failing at doing so.

         Though territorialism and possessiveness are not necessarily as flagrant—as ideas—as alienation and the search for friendship, they are undeniably recurring throughout Albee’s piece. The bench fight between Peter and Jerry is the probably the most prominent example of this theme. Shortly after concluding his seemingly interminable monologue—which turns out to be a partial farce to begin with—Jerry goes through temper fluxes, going from fuming to passive in moments. At one point he asks Peter to shift himself on the bench, gradually escalating his demands until Peter is almost thrown off his seat. Jerry attempts the initiation of a fight by punching Peter, so the two men struggle, in a strangely egotistical and futile struggle, with Jerry continuing to affront Peter, declaring that this is his bench, and the latter doing the same. Being territorial doesn’t appear to be an intrinsic characteristic for Jerry, but still seems to be conjured within him when he displays emotional attachment or response. A better way to explain this is to use the dog situation: despite the dog belonging to someone else and virtually loathing Jerry, in the way that Jerry portrays their relationship and in the manner that he commits to the dog, Jerry is possessive of him. You could also say he becomes territorial about and of Peter, going to extremes to ensure that Peter stays with him.

         Alienation, the pursuit for friendship and territorialism are all key elements of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story. All of these themes are expressed through the abstract and ludicrous, so much so that making an analysis of the play is akin to a blind man grappling for his surroundings.  And what’s more, the play concludes with Jerry stabbing himself, using the poor, unwitting Peter as an involuntary accomplice. With the themes all bordering on the tragic, and the finality of the piece being in death, it makes one wonder if there really is a hidden meaning to an absurdist play, or whether it is structured so that we may draw our own conclusions.