Zoo Station

Ideas on acting the play out. Is The Zoo Story really that absurd?

2008-03-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

Edward Albee`s play is something quite easily acted out on stage, as it requires a minimum of props; on the other hand, it provides quite a challenging task for the actors playing Jerry and Peter (especially Jerry). The play itself is extremely short, so there`s a whole lot staying underwater, what we see and read is just an iceberg peak. All the issues discussed, the overwhelming, bigger-than-life-itself feeling of loneliness are hard to act out and to show through the veil of irony and bitterness – which also need to be acted out. With the naturalistic and minimalistic set-up, the audience stays focused on the people, on human emotions, and any occurring falsity is sensed and spotted immediately.
The lack of physical action and diversity of movement (Jerry stands or walks around in front of the bench where Peter is sitting throughout half of the play), the dominating role of monologue that needs to be carefully read into – at least taken in slowly and thoughtfully, in complete silence would make it extremely unrewarding to try to film The Zoo Story, unless the film in subject is a low-budget conceptual snippet “for madmen only”.
The absurdity of “The Zoo Story” has long been questioned, and it seems to me that the play could hardly be considered wholly a specimen of the Theatre of Absurd. Naturalistic elements are easily found in the course of the story.
The absurd theatre demonstrates the the failure of language as an instrument of communication. Jerry’s attempts to talk to Peter end in senseless dialogues, and they end up talking at cross-purpose. The absurdity lies in the dialogue because it is more or less Jerry’s monologue.
The theatre of absurd resorts from specifying the time or the place it depicts. Albee`s play is as well not bound to time, but rather a certain condition of the society that keeps repeating itself and comes back around every so often after major catastrophes occur on the frontiers of time.
The theatre of absurd sets value on a fictive location and the characters do not have any personality and are often nameless. In Albee’s play the characters do not only have a name, they are described exactly at the beginning of the story. Even the location is described in detail.
It is quite a popular task set forward by playwrights of the naturalistic theatre to represent a man captured in social and moral structures, unable to act free. Peter is captured in his clichés he cannot disengage from, his thinking and action is controlled by external factors. The issues the play deals with taken into consideration, its naturalistic trails become evident.
A central condition for the theatre of absurd is to consider the world itself as absurd without a way out of this absurdity. To my mind, Edward Albee was trying to see a way out, trying to figure it out in the course of this play. It does not strike me as a story bearing an atmosphere of overshadowing sorrow, desperation and exasperation. It suffocates but it leaves a window open, there are hints to salvation scattered about – in the rustling foliage, in the glimmering dew-moistened grass, on the rusty ornamented legs of a park bench, in the smiles of mothers and children playing together, something obtained from the crowds of businessmen marching decisively along the streets of Manhattan, in the smell of the cherry pie cooked for you by your wife… Something Walt Whitman-like has made its way into this essay, clearing its way through the buzzing herd of multicolored machinery of absurdism, its wheels spinning furiously… Perhaps this gleaming clarity was brought about by the very same half-broken machinery, making me “go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly”, giving me the opportunity to sense, rather than read, to instinctively grasp the hope and the plain truth hidden within the absurd.

Comparison with Waiting For Godot and Der Steppenwolf

2008-03-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

There are two works of literature that spring to my mind when I try to draw a line of comparison between The Zoo Story and something of a similar atmosphere. Those two are Waiting For Godot (a classic example of an Absurdist play) and Herman Hesse`s Der Steppenwolf, where the metaphor of the Magic Theatre is embarked on, a Theatre of an elite nature – “For Madmen only”. To my mind, Jerry and Harry Haller have things in common, like the environment they’re found in – their “cages” (although Harry`s housing is somewhat more to the Philistine side – and that is one of his biggest peeves (there`s the clash of classes issue for you again)) or their analytical theories concerning the nature of man – rather bluntly dividing, in Jerry`s case, the humanity in whole, and in Harry`s, concentrating on his own soul, into “animals” and “vegetables”. In Harry`s case, the animal is called “Wolf of the Steppes”, “Der Steppenwolf”, and the calm, peaceful, feeling-at-ease, polite-to-a-toenail side is not given a particular allegorical name and just called Harry Haller instead. Like Jerry, Harry fails to find sense in the polite and heavily clichéd word patterns that are at everyone’s convenience to use. The hero is beset with reflections on his being ill-suited for the world of "everybody", the regular people. The world of prim, clean little flower pots, of flats where the great Goethe is nothing more than a tiny picture ornamenting the host`s table, of marriages of disturbing properness and cages everywhere one has to look. Harry seeks real contact, closing up from the outer world at the same time, becoming too self-conceited. He gets reprimanded by a mysterious author, a certain “engineer of souls” who appears to know Harry better than the man himself does. Harry embarks on the truth – in a book about himself- greedily, and learns that his “two-sided man” theory is also but a cage, and that he, in fact, possesses millions of souls and can live millions of lives.( This aspect of the theory put forward by Hesse has given way to many contradictory interpretations; Hesse himself mentioned that the multifaceted nature of human soul is a Buddhist concept, one not easily digested by the European world revolving around the individual).
Harry is helped in his quest by a mysterious young woman named Hermine – a girl free of barriers – but also stuck in just one life, trying to wave her miserable state of mind off, turning away from her own pains by trying to “cure”, or, rather, anesthetize Harry, who remains self-centered – erecting a wall to separate himself from the Philistine, “empty souls” – the gate leading to the Magic Theatre placed in a fragment of a once sturdy, strong wall stands as a metaphor for this self-imposed seclusion. In The Zoo Story, seclusion becomes isolation that Jerry strives to break out of, but the same problem of people uninterested in each other’s souls, only taking in each other`s labels is viewed in both the play and Hesse`s novel. In the end, Harry is led to the “Magic Theater”, where conservative notions about his soul disintegrate, and Harry participates in several fantastic episodes, culminating with him killing Hermine with a knife, apparently fulfilling her own earlier request but really showing his continuing ignorance. Harry is consequently judged by Mozart, who condemns him to "listen to the radio music of life", challenging him at the same time to "reverence the spirit behind it".
The archetype that comes to my mind is that of a loner, an outsider, with a touch of the character of the “little man” who sees deeper into the diseases of his time, though is seriously infected himself and does not have the power or the light to uncover the kernel of truth in the debris of absurdity that impersonates order. Who could serve as a better example for this type of man than Pechorin? As for American literature – it is extremely rich in providing us with images of individuals lost in humongous, monster-like cities, loveless and devoid of warmness of soul. The suffocating effect of the city bustle and the bars that keep people apart is explored by Herman Melville in his “Bartleby the Scrivener”.
The “oddball” archetype is closely related to the “Rioter” or the “Fool” archetype, and that goes on to intertwine with the image of the Prophet. The person whom these characteristics evolve around is, of course, Jerry. His absurd way of holding a conversation, though, has definite logical reasons behind it, as we have already discovered. He tries to pull Peter out of his comfortable cage, or frame, by means of a kind of a “shock therapy”. Jerry actually clearly needs similar treatment himself, as he’s showing signs of a psychological, perhaps even psychiatric (schizophrenia?) illness. This feature brings us to an association with the characters of One Flew Over The Cuckoo`s Nest, of which Chief Bromden provides a vivid example of an oddball, though not as aggressive and active as Jerry, but he gets his own way in the end of the story. Both Jerry and Albee himself play the role of rioters, sharing their wisdom and prophecies in the forms of parables, seemingly random actions and phrases, irony. Jerry even tickles Peter in a desperate try to get response. The function of prophesizing is what makes Jerry`s image correspond with that of Jesus Christ, a fact that was dwelled on earlier in my paper.
Like The Zoo Story, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett revolves around two characters whose often hilariously funny conversations and behavior hint at mysterious forces and surface realism and coexist with expressionistic, metaphorically pungent drama. The two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, spend their days reliving their past trying to make sense of their existence, and even contemplate suicide as a form of escape. They are absurdist figures who remain detached from the audience, and their vaudeville mannerisms create a comic effect even when contemplating such serious matters as hanging themselves. There is a similarity to The Zoo Story in the way that class difference is also shown clearly, by introducing the characters of Pozzo and Lucky into the play. Vladimir, like Jerry, is in mental anguish, but he is a calmer sort of a person, the more resilient of the pair. Estragon is preoccupied with mundane things, like where to get food. Those two characters could not be any more different, but they belong together, they share a conspicuous form of understanding each other while experiencing communication problems from time to time. Waiting for Godot, as well as The Zoo Story, touches upon the topics existentialists dealt with. Both plays have Christian symbols incorporated into their fabric (The Cerberus – like dog in The Zoo Story- goatherds and shepherds, the story of the two thieves and the possible interpretation of the enigmatic Godot as the God Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for).

Summary&Analysis

2008-03-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

Now, in order to look into the peculiarities of Edward Albee`s artistic method, the way the story is developed, it would be necessary to follow through with an analysis of each of the play`s happenings, in an orderly fashion.
Albee`s play opens up with a buttoned-up man named Peter, sitting on a bench in Central Park, legs crossed, smoking a pipe and reading a large hardback book. It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, as birds’ chirps confirm. Into the patch of park roams a wandering oddball named Jerry, who, standing behind Peter, announces creepily, “I’ve been to the zoo.”
Jerry doesn’t so much talk with Peter as accost him, poking and prodding at the man’s life as a husband, father, and executive, making uncomfortable, eerily direct questions—“Do you mind if we talk?” he asks, well after they’ve begun. Jerry’s queer manner of communicating and Peter’s curiosity slowly stirring up makes the audience suspect that something is going to happen, that this is not simple occasional chitchat between strangers, that this is potentially something of substance. Though the play has just begun, Peter has already reached the turning point of his life, though he doesn’t know it yet.
Jerry strives to start a full-fledged conversation which results in his monologue as Peter’s replies are devoid of meaning and only result from his politeness. Jerry builds up tension, first scattering myriads of questions on Peter’s private life over him, then making somewhat rude but accurate suppositions and, failing to capture Peter’s interest, begins telling stories about himself. The tales are the kind you’re not sure you want to hear—there’s an always-weeping neighbor; two empty picture frames back in his bedroom; his extreme relationship with a neighbor’s dog—though you sense the stories’ significance in defining this man’s existence. So you listen. “The Story of Jerry and the Dog” is announced by Jerry in a “reading-from-a-billboard” voice, which marks the importance of what we are going to hear. Moreover, the story is framed by mysterious phrases that sound like philosophical maxims – for example, “sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly”(quite an accurate description of the process of symbolism – and of the Absurdist manner of writing). Before actually dwelling on his relationship with the dog, Jerry describes the character of its owner, the landlady. She is so closely identified with the dog that it must be accepted that Albee intends them to be interchangeable, as symbols. For the dog, which is as hideous as its mistress, has a permanent erection which parallels the woman’s sexual desire. It is also described as “making sounds in his throat like a woman,” while the landlady has eyes which “looked like the dog’s eyes.” Both the dog and its mistress attack Jerry in the entrance to the building, a Freudian image, one could suspect. The smothering of “the animal within” is also a classical Freudian concept, with easily recognizable, see-through imagery. Jerry’s response to these attacks is the same in both cases. He repulses them. He sees both the dog and the landlady as a threat to himself as an invasion of the isolation which he has come to accept as the norm of human existence. He offers the animal food in an attempt to secure immunity from contact, and when this fails he attempts to kill it. Although the dog survives the poisoned food, it no longer attempts to make contact, but lapses into an indifference which, as Albee suggests, is equally a mark of human relationships. It is at this moment that Jerry suddenly reaches the understanding which sends him out in search of someone to whom he can pass on his insight. Jerry recognizes that the dog’s violence had indeed been an attempt to make contact, and that, as such, it was an act of love: "We neither love nor hurt because we do not try to reach other… was the dog’s attempt to bite me not an act of love? If we can so misunderstand, well then, why have we invented the word love in the first place?" It is this message of the need for love in a world that places its faith purely in appearances which Jerry carries with him to the park where he meets Peter, this is the sensation that dawned upon him at the zoo; and it is, in effect, the ritual of Jerry and the dog that is now acted out on the stage. Peter now plays the role which Jerry had played in the rooming-house, while Jerry plays the role of the dog. So, too, Peter responds to Jerry’s intrusion firstly by kindly condescension, by “being patronizing” in reacting out of adopted politeness as Jerry had in offering the dog hamburger meat, and then finally by violence, as Jerry had in attempting to kill the animal.
Love, human contact, is an art which has to be learned. One has to begin with simple things, as Jerry states later on in the play, rather prophetically, carrying the truth from the depths - de profundis! There certainly are some reasons to consider the character of Jerry as a symbol for the Savior Himself (hence the similarity of names), experiencing atonement, receiving death from the hand of his subject whom he had blessed with the ultimate truth. «It’s just that if you can’t deal with people you have to make a start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS! … A person has to have some way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people …SOMETHING. With a bed, with a cockroach… with pornographic playing cards, with a strongbox…."
Peter’s response to the parable is that of a man who can no longer find arguments, but who still wants to cling desperately to his creed. Peter shouts out "I DON‘T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE" and gets up to leave. This parody of contact stimulates a momentary understanding on Peter’s part of the nexus which Jerry has been trying to establish between the zoo and the nature of contemporary life. Jerry then adopts the same strategy which the dog had used - "kindness and cruelty combined ...» The kindness done with and abandoned, he announces that it’s feeding time in the lions` cage and provokes Peter into a defense of his bench-- a mock battle in which he is seen absurdly defending the privacy and property rights which are clearly the basis of his values. That`s where the story reaches its culmination, taking a somewhat unexpected turn. But Jerry is determined that this violence will not lead to the casual indifference which had been the result of his encounter with the dog. Accordingly he throws a knife to Peter and then impales himself on it. The "middle-class" Everyman, then, has finally been released from the solitude which he had taken as a necessary and even desirable aspect of the human condition. As Jerry insists, he has been "dispossessed." Peter, at the end of the play, has been liberated from his false assumptions and is finally purged of his illusions. Never again, as Jerry insists, will he be able to retreat into solipsism; never again will he be able to repeat the frantic cry of the alienated and the disengaged, “leave me alone.”

Mood,atmosphere, cultural issues touched upon by Albee, cultural background

2008-03-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

The general mood of the play struck me as a somewhat asphyxiating, suffocating one, one that makes the reader brace himself and wait for something to happen…though not something as horrible as what we see in the end of the play. This feeling of asphyxiation may well bear correspondence with what Jerry felt like. The “cages” people are stuck in provide little freedom to enjoy.
America, where the action takes place, has itself always been referred to as “The Land of Freedom”, the most democratic country in the world, a manifestation of multiculturalism. It was supposed to be a “melting pot”, wielding together different personalities, races, cultures and social classes. In reality, this scheme often failed to settle in the hearts of the American people and remained an ever-smiling mask on the surface. For human souls are not something that can easily be mixed and smoothened. There’s also the problem of “fitting in” that’s characteristic of a society consisting of many different groups with values juxtaposed unevenly. Those groups, surprisingly, usually have stiff rules about how one is to become a member and how members should behave, although the members are not always aware those rules exist. But day by day, from obediently following those rules, people forget how to think outside their own mind frame and start considering the way they think and behave the only acceptable one…the only convenient one and the only possible one. Peter, for example, fails to understand why Jerry lives where he lives or his question: “Say, what’s the dividing line between upper-middle-middle-class and lower-upper-middle class?”.
The venue Albee chose for his play helps transmit the feeling of trying to merge different classes and different personalities. Central Park lies in the heart of Manhattan, surrounded by the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, north of Broadway and the show district. To the north of Central Park there is Harlem a district where a lot of black and poor people live. Especially black and Puerto Rican families represent the population of Harlem. Thus, Central Park is surrounded by diverse residential areas with people who have different living conditions but who can meet each other in Central Park.
Be it the banker who eats his sandwich in his lunchtime or the wino who is in search for a sleeping berth for the night – they meet each other randomly because Central Park is open to the public and free for everyone. It is the most popular meeting point for the citizens of Manhattan.
Peter and Jerry, two representatives of different social classes, happen to meet each other in Central Park. Peter wants to enjoy his leisure time and Jerry is in search of conversation. Peter is, however, seemingly hidden in a secluded corner of the park, surrounded by thick foliage. This makes Peter believe he owns this place, the bench he sits on and that he will stay unruffled forever, reading his newspaper, being his own comfortable self. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone, doesn’t want to share anything he’s made of, like a selfish-or perhaps persecuted - animal, crawling in a dark corner to gnaw on its bone in the peace of its own isolation.
The feeling of isolation and loneliness, of lack of communication penetrates the atmosphere of the play. In a big city, an individual becomes impersonal and alienated, he`s not an individual anymore, he`s part of the bustling crowd. But in that crowd, he is alone, and no-one really cares about him, as he is just one of many, many other people with similar aims and pains. Even Jerry’s suicide is an attempt of finding real, close contact with someone, so is his trouble in reaching compromise with the landlady’s dog. He finally succeeds in tearing Peter out of his cage and forcing him to make use of his “animal side”, in tying Peter to himself, in establishing a close “villain-victim” relationship between himself and Peter(though it is hard to say which is which…and is it relevant?). The price he pays is somewhat too high, so to say. Peter is let out of his cage- more like dragged out, but, like a zoo animal, he is lost in his own freedom, utterly confused. The ending is an open one, but, to my mind, Peter has an option of either “hiding his head in the sand” like an ostrich or bringing around dramatic changes in his way of life. He can no longer hide in his bench cage, as Jerry – according to the fundamental law of nature - won it.
Even today, in spite of the wide variety of modern communication tools available, mainly young people feel more and more isolated. In theory they can communicate with the whole wide world but in reality they are often locked up in their rooms and absorbed by their computers. An increasing number of young people suffers from lack of social contact and as a result depression has become a wide spread illness among young people. In Germany the suicide rate is higher than the number of mortal victims in traffic accidents; a fact that gives me the chills, personally, isn’t this figure shocking? It gives evidence that an enormous number of people must be in the same situation as Jerry.
As Jerry’s example shows, suicide may be the ultimate attempt to attract the attention of society. The fact that these people are hopeless and lonely does not necessarily mean that they are no valuable members of our society very often they are just different from the mainstream society, they are more sensitive than others and desperately striving to be accepted.
The parallel to Jerry’s fate is evident. That is the reason why I am convinced that Albee’s play, even being looked upon from this one-sided point of view is still of utmost importance and mirrors the problems of today’s society.
To Albee, as to those other analysts of American decay Allan Ginsberg and Randall Jarrell, the zoo has suddenly become a horrifyingly accurate image of a society where furious activity serves only to mask an essential inertia and whose sociability conceals a fundamental isolation.
There is no disguising the heavily ironical tone adopted by the play’s protagonist, Jerry, when he announces that he lives in “the greatest city in the world. Amen.” But in the face of indifference and complacency Albee does not lapse into despair. He stresses the need for man to break out of his self-imposed isolation to make contact with his fellow man. What he is calling for, in other words, is a revival of love.
The clash of class values has always been a crucial issue in big, developed societies like America. In his play Edward Albee embarks on this issue by introducing two American citizens of different classes who could not be more different.
There is Peter who lives in well-established structures. He is satisfied with his situation and represents the average middle-class wage earner; the typical father of a family.
Peter lives in a prosperous residential area in Manhattan, he is a well-off textbook publisher Even his appearance provides information about his social class: “He wears tweeds, smokes a pipe, carries horn-rimmed glass. Although he is moving into middle age, his dress and his manner would suggest a man younger.” Peter reflects the typical middle-class American with his anchor in traditional American values. He has adapted himself to his environment.
Peter is seemingly content with his social status. There will be no advancement from upper-middle class to upper class but there will also be no relegation into lower-middle class. He fits into the picture of the model American and as he tells Jerry about his family conditions the recipient could believe that he and his family are broken out of a picture book. Peter belongs to the mainstream of American society.
In contrast to Peter, Jerry is off-beat. He neither has a wife nor a family to live with. His mother, an alcoholic, left his father when he was 10 years old. Thus, his father took to drinking after his wife′ s death and he died in an accident. As a result, Jerry was brought up by a pious aunt who died on the day of his high school graduation.
As opposed to Peter Jerry is not satisfied with his situation, he wants to break out of it. This is explained when he describes his living conditions. He lives in a rooming-house in a small room with a beaverboard partition wall in it which separates him from one of his neighbors. The fact that Jerry has to share his room with someone else shows that he is very poor and not able to afford an apartment for his own. Even his appearance leaves nothing to be questioned. “A man in his late thirties, not poorly dressed, but carelessly. What was once a trim a trim and lightly muscled body has begun to go to fat; and while he is no longer handsome, it is evident that he once was.”
Jerry does not fit into the mainstream and therefore he is seen as a social outsider, by no means representing the model American. He belongs to those people who exist in the American society but whose existence is no subject for conversation – neither at home and nor on television.
Another cultural issue brought up in Peter and Jerry’s dialogue is that of marriage. It seems that Peter is quite happy and safe in his cozy stable environment, with his wife, daughters, cats and parakeets. But as Jerry pokes and prods Peter’s soft spots, we find out that his marriage suppressed the animal in him, that he looks like “an animal man” but can`t stand cats or parakeets which even seem to have more power over his household than he does. On the other hand, Peter believes he is happy and is infatuated by his own “married with kids-executive” image, whereas Jerry fails to experience the charms of love. “I wonder if it's sad that I never see the little ladies more than once. I've never been able to have sex with, or, how is it
put? ... Make love to anybody more than once.” He goes own to reflect on his teen gay relationship with a Greek boy, which could also serve as a means of shaking Peter up and forcing him to think out of his usual frame, to stop responding in a leisurely , cliché - filled pattern.
The Zoo Story was written in 1958, when the movement of the Theatre of Absurd was blooming, flourishing in the literary circles. It emerged in Europe and the United States after World War II, when people were discouraged with the unjustness of the world. Plays falling into this category convey humanity’s sense of alienation and its loss of bearings in an illogical, unjust, and ridiculous world. “In its critique of language the Theatre of the Absurd closely reflects the preoccupation of contemporary philosophy with language, its effort to disentangle language, as a genuine instrument for logic and the discovery of reality, from the welter of emotive, illogical usages, the grammatical conventions that have, in the past, often been confused with genuine logical relationships. And equally, in its emphasis on the basic absurdity of the human condition, on the bankruptcy of all closed systems of thought with claims to provide a total explanation of reality, the Theatre of the Absurd has much in common with the existential philosophy of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus,” – writes Martin Esslin, the critic who penned the Theatre of Absurd.
There can be little doubt that such a sense of disillusionment, such a collapse of all previously held firm beliefs is a characteristic feature of our own times. The social and spiritual reasons for such a sense of loss of meaning are manifold and complex: the waning of religious faith that had started with the Enlightenment and led Nietzsche to speak of the 'death of God' by the eighteen-eighties; the breakdown of the liberal faith in inevitable social progress in the wake of the First World War; the disillusionment with the hopes of radical social revolution as predicted by Marx after Stalin had turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian tyranny; the relapse into barbarism, mass murder, and genocide during Hitler's brief rule over Europe during the Second World War; and, in the aftermath of that war, the spread of spiritual emptiness in the outwardly prosperous and affluent societies of Western Europe and the United States. There can be no doubt: for many intelligent and sensitive human beings the world of the mid twentieth century did lose its meaning and simply ceased to make sense.

Actual meaning of the title (post-reading analysis)

2008-02-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-02-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

“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

2008-02-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

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).
(...)

2007-11-21T10:15:00.001-08:00

How Albee’s 'Zoo Story' Birthed 'Peter and Jerry'

Published Aug 24, 2007

1. In 1958, Edward Albee, a West Village layabout, writes a one-act as “a kind of 30th birthday present to myself,” as he now puts it. In it, down- at-heels Jerry and bourgeois Peter erupt in violence over a Central Park bench. Albee calls it The Zoo Story.

(Photo: Bettmann/Corbis)

2. Albee finds a Swiss actor-director, Pinkas Braun, who agrees to translate it into German and help stage it in Berlin alongside Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. In the fall of 1959, Albee travels to Germany to see his first produced play. He doesn’t understand a word.

(Photo: Matthias Kulka/Corbis)

3. Back in New York, the Zoo Story gets a reading at the Actors Studio. Norman Mailer declares, “That’s the best fucking one-act play I’ve ever seen.”

(Photo: Bettmann/Corbis)

4. The Zoo Story opens in 1960 at the Provincetown Playhouse. Reviews are mixed, but it makes Albee an overnight sensation. By the mid-sixties, he’s won five Tonys for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and The Zoo Story is the second-most-produced school play in America.

(Photo: Bettmann/Corbis)

5. In 1981, Albee writes an alternate version called Another Part of the Zoo—“a comedy, almost a parody thing, for a gay benefit,” he says, with a new backstory involving a gay affair. His biographer, Mel Gussow, considered it an artistic low point. “I knew what it was,” Albee counters. “It was a joke.”

(Photo: Denis Scott/Corbis)

6. Albee’s career rebounds a decade later, but The Zoo Story leaves him unsatisfied. “We don’t learn a lot about Peter,” he says. In 2003, Connecticut’s Hartford Stage commissions him to write a first act about Peter’s family called Homelife. Albee picks Pam MacKinnon to direct the two acts together, and they debut there as Peter and Jerry.

(Photo: Denis Scott/Corbis)

7. Three years later, it’s set for a New York transfer. MacKinnon stays on, and introduces Albee to Dallas Roberts. Albee loves him as Jerry. For Peter, he goes with an old favorite—Bill Pullman, whose role in 2002’s The Goat had helped get Albee his first best-play Tony since Virginia Woolf.

(Photo: Courtesy of Barlow Hartman)

SOURCE: New York Magazine

An atmospherical song

2007-11-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

Since this blogspot doesn`t host audio files, I am posting a link to a youtube video. It features a song I have just stumbled upon which doesn`t actually have much to do with the play I`m commenting upon here, but I thought that the overall mood is something Jerry could experience at times...When he felt at ease with the world around him.

Here`s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGykXOamGqE

2007-11-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

Some background information

How did Albee write “The Zoo Story”?

After a period of severe depression, Albee gave up his job, and with his thirtieth birthday looming ominously he sat down to write a play. He himself explained, "I wrote 'The Zoo Story' on a wobbly table in the kitchen of the apartment I was living at the time—at 238 West Fourth Street, I did a draft, made pencil revision, and typed a second script, and that’s the way I’ve been doing my plays since. I finished ‘The Zoo Story’ in three weeks…."

The Zoo Story was read by a number of New York producers and duly rejected by them all. … Eventually it received its first performance in Berlin, at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt, on 28 September 1959—some four months before its belated American debut: at the Provincetown Playhouse.

In a way it is fitting that a play whish attacks so directly the indifference and sterility of contemporary American life should have received its first performance in Europe. It is as though Albee’s subversive nature had been instantly recognized by a theatre and a public of which he has become increasingly scornful. As he puts aptly in the play, "sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly"

Tone of the play

The Zoo Story sets the tone for most of his subsequent plays, for his subject here, as later, is America and what he takes to be its contempt for human values. To Albee, as to those other analysts of American decay Allan Ginsberg and Randall Jarrell, the zoo has suddenly become a horrifyingly accurate image of a society where furious activity serves only to mask an essential inertia and whose sociability conceals a fundamental isolation.

There is no disguising the heavily ironical tone adopted by the play’s protagonist, Jerry, when he announces that he lives in “the greatest city in the world. Amen.” For his apartment is in a crumbling house on Columbus Avenue, an address which itself indicates clearly enough the object of Albee’s satire and the metaphorically basis of his work. But in the face of indifference and complacency Albee does not lapse into despair. He stresses the need for man to break out of his self-imposed isolation to make contact with his fellow man. What he is calling for, in other words, is a revival of love.

"THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG"

Jerry lives in a large apartment building on the West Side in which the tenants are all outcasts of one kind or another. There is no contact between these tenants, and Jerry characterizes it as a “humiliating excuse for a jail.” Thus, whether the image be that of a zoo or a jail, the bars which mark human isolation seem self-evident. In the parable, the landlady is so closely identified with the dog that it must be accepted that Albee intends them to be interchangeable, as symbols. For the dog, which is as hideous as its mistress, has a permanent erection which parallels the woman’s sexual desire. It is also described as “making sounds in his throat like a woman,” while the landlady has eyes which “looked like the dog’s eyes.” Both the dog and its mistress attack Jerry in the entrance to the building, a Freudian image which links violence to sexuality in a way which foreshadows Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The symbolic nature of this story is further emphasized by an otherwise enigmatic statement which is a perfect description of the process of symbolism. Jerry explains that "What I am going to tell you has something to do with how sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly."

Jerry’s response to these attempts to make contact is the same in both cases. He repulses them. He sees both the dog and the landlady as a threat to himself as an invasion of the isolation which he has come to accept as the norm of human existence. He offers the animal food in an attempt to secure immunity from contact, and when this fails he attempts to kill it. Although the dog survives the poisoned food, it no longer attempts to make contact, but lapses into the simulated indifference which, Albee urges, is equally a mark of human relationships. It is at this moment that Jerry suddenly reaches the understanding which sends him out in search of someone to whom he can pass on his insight.

"An Act of Love"

Jerry recognizes that the dog’s violence had indeed been an attempt to make contact, and that, as such, it was an act of love: "We neither love nor hurt because we do not try to reach other… was the dog’s attempt to bite me not an act of love? If we can so misunderstand, well then, why have we invented the word love in the first place?" It is this message of the need for love in a world that places its faith purely in appearances which Jerry carries with him from the West Side; and it is, in effect, the ritual of Jerry and the dog that is now acted out on the stage. Peter now plays the role which Jerry had played in the rooming-house, while Jerry plays the role of the dog. So, too, Peter responds to Jerry’s intrusion firstly by kindly condescension, as Jerry had in offering the dog hamburger meat, and then finally by violence, as Jerry had in attempting to kill the animal.

Love, human contact, is an art which has to be learned. One has to begin with simple things, with a tree, a rock or a cloud. This science of love is essentially that which Jerry goes on to describe to Peter:" It’s just that if you can’t deal with people you have to make a start somewhere. WITH ANIMALS! … A person has to have some way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with people …SOMETHING. With a bed, with a cockroach… with pornographic playing cards, with a strongbox…."

From Rejection to purgation of illusions

Peter’s response to the parable is that of a man who can no longer find arguments, but who still wants to cling desperately to his creed. Peter shouts out "I DON‘T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE" and gets up to leave. This parody of contact stimulates a momentary understanding on Peter’s part of the nexus which Jerry has been trying to establish between the zoo and the nature of contemporary life. Peter admits that he had his own zoo there for the moment. But Jerry adopts the same strategy which the dog had used-- violence. He provokes Peter into a defense of his bench-- a mock battle in which e is seen absurdly defending the privacy and property rights which are clearly the basis of his values. But Jerry is determined that this violence will not revert to the casual indifference which had been the result of his encounter with the dog. Accordingly he throws a knife to Peter and then impales himself on it. The "middle-class" Everyman, then, has finally been released from the solitude which he had taken as a necessary and even desirable aspect of the human condition. As Jerry insists, he has been "dispossessed." Peter, at the end of the play, has been liberated from his false assumptions and is finally purged of his illusions. Never again, as Jerry insists, will he be able to retreat into solipsism; never again will he be able to repeat the frantic cry of the alienated and the disengaged, “leave me alone.”

Source: http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/iacd_2001F/asynchronous_drama/zooandsandbox.htm

Good evening

2007-11-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

I thought I would post a photo of myself here, just so that people can see who is working on the project)

A preliminary suggestion (also premature idea)

2007-11-06T02:40:00.000-08:00

It troubles me greatly that I still haven`t laid my hands on the English text of the play. I still haven`t read it, therefore the idea I`m going to put forward may turn out to be a completely bizarre one. But here`s what I think. Since the theme I`m going to tackle while analyzing the play is called " The Theatre of Absurd ", it would be interesting to try to incorporate a comparison with a concept of the same name in Hesse`s "Steppenwolf". Just a brief slide-over, a mentioning would perhaps add a twist to my project.
It could just be so that such a comparison is a highly irrelevant one. I would definitely appreciate advice. Thanks in advance.

Yet another plot summary; a fuller one written in a clearer language

2007-11-06T02:36:00.000-08:00

This one-act play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry. Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets who lives in ignorance of the world outside his married life while Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man who is very troubled. These men meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Jerry is 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 from his life including "THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG" 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.
The catalyst for this shocking ending transpires when Peter announces, "I really must be going home;..." Jerry, in response, begins to tickle Peter. Peter giggles, laughs and agrees to listen to Jerry finish telling "what happened at the zoo." At the same time Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench. Peter decides to fight for the bench and becomes incredibly angry. 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'.

Information source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_Story

Some bits and pieces of information on Albee`s play for everyone to get at least a vague idea of what "The Zoo Story" deals with

2007-11-06T02:27:00.000-08:00

Synopsis
". . . [A]s described by Oppenheimer, Newsday: ‘A man sits peacefully reading in the sunlight in Central Park. There enters a second man, the antithesis of the first. He is a young, unkempt and undisciplined vagrant, where the first is neat, ordered, well-to-do, conventional. The vagrant is a soul in torture and rebellion. He longs to communicate so fiercely that, when he does make the attempt, he alternately frightens and repels his listener. He is a man drained of all hope who, in his passion for company, seeks to drain his companion. With ironic humor and unrelenting suspense, we see the young savage slowly but relentlessly bring his victim down to his own atavistic level and initiate a shocking and horrible ending.’
Comment
• "A New York and European success. ‘This is good theatre, period.’ — McClain, N.Y. Journal-American. . . . ‘Mr. Albee can make his narrative seem ominous and his climax chilling while writing with unhackneyed vigor, observing with humor, insight and sympathy, and drawing character with vividness and force.’ — Watts, N.Y. Post. . . .
• "Extremely simple set and props. . . .
• "Following instructions from the author of this play, it may be released only for amateur performances at which the audience is unsegregated."
• Subsequently rewritten into a full-length play.
Themes
alienation, anger, arbitrariness, Central Park, compulsion, conventionality, dominance, violence, wanderer.

Image and text source:www.heniford.net/4321/index.php?n=Citations-Z...

Edward Albee`s short biography

2007-10-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

Born on March 12, 1928, in Washington, D.C., Edward Albee was adopted as an infant by Reed Albee, the son of Edward Franklin Albee, a powerful American Vaudeville producer. Brought up in an atmosphere of great affluence, he clashed early with the strong-minded Mrs. Albee who attempted to mold him into a respectable member of the Larchmont, New York social scene. But the young Albee refused to be bent to his mother's will, choosing instead to associate with artists and intellectuals whom she found, at the very least, objectionable.

At the age of twenty, Albee moved to New York's Greenwich Village where he held a variety of odd jobs including office boy, record salesman, and messenger for Western Union before finally hitting it big with his 1959 play, The Zoo Story. Originally produced in Berlin , The Zoo Story told the story of a drifter who acts out his own murder with the unwitting aid of an upper-middle-class editor. Along with other early works such as The Sandbox (1959) and The American Dream (1960), The Zoo Story effectively gave birth to American absurdist drama. Albee was hailed as the leader of a new theatrical movement and labeled as the successor to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill. He is, however, probably more closely related to the likes of such European playwrights as Beckett and Harold Pinter. Although they may seem at first glance to be realistic, the surreal nature of Albee's plays is never far from the surface. In A Delicate Balance (1966), for example, Harry and Edna carry a mysterious psychic plague into their best friends' living room, and George and Martha's child in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) turns out to be nothing more than a figment of their combined imagination, a pawn invented for use in their twisted, psychological games. In Three Tall Women (1994), separate characters on stage in the first act turn out to be, in the second act, the same character at different stages of her life.

Albee describes his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."

Although he suffered through a decade of plays that refused to yield a commercial hit in the 1980's, Albee experienced a stunning success with Three Tall Women (1994) which won him his third Pulitzer Prize as well as Best Play awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle and Outer Critics Circle. He had previously won Pulitzers for A Delicate Balance (1966) and Seascape (1975). Other awards include an Obie Award (1960) and a Tony Award (1964).

Courtesy of http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc44.html