Actual meaning of the title (post-reading analysis)

Having read the play itself, I, of course, could put more thought into explaining and interpreting its title. The most immediate, off-the-surface reason is that one of the characters, Jerry, greets the other, Peter, with the words: “I`ve been to the zoo” and goes on to lure Peter`s attention by promising to tell him about “what happened at the zoo” throughout the play. Jerry tells Peter about the way animals live at the zoo. “I went to the zoo to find out more about the way animals exist with each other, and with people, too”. It eventually becomes clear that Jerry- at one point- uses the zoo as a metaphor for New York-even the whole modern society, where people live like animals in their cages, isolated from each other. They aren`t able to get in contact because they`re locked up in their own secluded existence. The zoo is also a foreign environment for the animals-a place where they have to smother their natural instincts and eventually become “vegetables”, as Jerry puts it, classifying the human species and making out two types. “Animals” have something to defend, and Peter becomes an “animal” in the end of the play, forced by Jerry to fight for his dignity and “his bench”, for his comfortable upper-middle-class values.
Peter lives isolated in his social class and has made himself a cozy second cage on a bench in Central Park, Jerry`s cage is the rooming-house he lives in. The stiff rules of socializing and “living normally” are the bars in Peter`s cage. Peter also has his “own zoo at home” – that does not only refer to his parakeets and cats, but also to the misunderstandings between him and his wife and daughters.
The characters in the play are trapped and lonely, like zoo animals. Jerry comes to Central Park craving communication, close contact with a human being. That is stated by his words: “Every once in a while I like to talk to somebody, really talk; like to get to know somebody, know all about him”.
Jerry is an orphan, just like many animals in zoos, who exist without full family structures. Each one of Jerry’s neighbors is like an animal put on show, a queer, exotic animal which nobody really knows much about. The “animals” in this house do not communicate with each other and do the same things over and over: a woman cries, the colored queen “plucks his eyebrows and goes to the john”. There`s also a fierce “zookeeper”, who is herself more like an animal – the landlady whose aim in life is to satisfy her basic instincts. She, too, could, by harassing Jerry, be striving to find some kind of communication and failing to do so.

Associations with the title(pre-reading expectations)

“The Zoo Story” caught my attention at random. My pre-reading impression was unrightfully based on a couple of songs I really like, both bearing names containing the word “zoo” and hardly any resemblance to the atmosphere or thematic diapason of the play (but how was I to know that then?). The first song is called “The Zookeeper’s Boy” and it strikes me as a very pleasant, out-of-this-world, somewhat Scandinavian fairytale-like combination of voice, lyrics and music. The same could be spoken of the band playing it, which is called Mew. The lyrics do suggest a possibility of a comparison between people-animals, people-people and animals-animals relationships. The atmosphere of the song seems to be soaked through with love, cheerfulness and a feeling of being at ease with oneself, even though “evidently there’s a dark storm coming and the chain on my swing is squeaking like a mouse”.
The author of the song also compares the girl he`s singing to to a giraffe:
You`re tall just like a giraffe,
You have to climb to find its head,
But when there`s a glitch,
You`re an ostrich,
You`ve got your head in the sand.
This made me expect something like a kind allegory of a story starring a contemplative giraffe and some other animals it talks to and shares its wisdom with, at a zoo that is magically closed off from the rest of the world, or is located in a remote place, like a tiny suburban Swedish town.
Having also read a wonderful German story about a girl who wanted a giraffe for Christmas and her father, who got the zookeeper to hang a sign proclaiming the girl`s ownership over a giraffe at the zoo on the animal`s cage, I transferred the concept of a long-nurtured dream (the little girl`s) onto the allegorical character of the giraffe in what I imagined to be “The Zoo Story” – the giraffe, a bit of a philosopher in his nature, was supposed to be talking to various animals and then telling them a story with a veiled meaning, a parable of sorts. That is what I craved and expected from Albee`s play. Strange but true.
The other song I had mentioned that influenced my pre-reading expectations is called “At the Zoo”. It characterizes the animals as if they were human, e.g. “zebras are reactionary, antelopes are missionaries…penguins plot in secrecy”. What are those characteristics based on? It sounds a bit like Colonel Matterson`s ramblings in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest”: “America is.. the plum. The peach. The pumpkin seed. America is…tell-ah-vision.” But somehow, one, like Chief Bromden, can see-and sense- what they`re driving at.
Both of the songs I have mentioned have been recorded on the cd included in my course paper. Perhaps it will be easier to understand what I felt if you try listening to them.

The paper

I thought I`d start converting the paper I did for Prof. Volkova`s course into a collections of elements I can first post there and then on the site(soon as I figure out how to convert the former into the latter). The paper is a massive one, here`s the introduction:
The literary piece I’m analyzing in this paper could by no means seem an obvious choice; it could be called a risky one, even, if you ask me. Absurdist plays are not as popular in Russia as they are in the USA, and there exists a kind of a prejudiced opinion against those in the wider circles of our society. I even get the feeling that people are- afraid to explore the meaning (since it is stated that there is no clear meaning at all by the very name of the movement taken into focus) of such works of literature. The bohemian circles, of course, take interest in such plays and poems, but, to my mind, either tend to wave a thing or two off nonchalantly or immerse fully in the absurd or randomnisty to which they add generously so that they are no longer seen or heard – no self-assured, clear, ringing sound is to be made out from the fog of emotions and voices each speaking its own undisputable truth.
Giving what I have written so far a critical squint, I am forced to admit that I, too, am falling victim to the magical luring charms of what linguists call “the associational component of a word’s meaning”. Having conceded defeat in trying to express myself adequately with the means of language that are available, I salute the Absurdists and start nurturing a warm feeling of being able to relate to the desperation, vagueness, fragments-of-thoughts-swirling kaleidoscopically-in-the-head-type of atmosphere they wrote in(supposedly).
(...)