Alienation in The Zoo Story by Edward Albee

杜利霞

【Abstract】This paper is a study of the theme of alienation and isolation in The Zoo Story by Edward Albee. From this study, we can see that, Edward Albee presented us with the freezing aloofness in modern society in such a short one?鄄act play. In modern society, everyone lives in a cage, big or small, luxurious or shabby, like Peter and Jerry in the play.

【key words】alienation；isolation；cage；imprisonment；conformity；confrontation

【中图分类号】G64 【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】2095-3089（2015）04-0103-01

The Zoo Story was Albees first produced play, and has been proclaimed by Christopher Bigsby “the most impressive debut by any American dramatist”.(Bigsby , 129) Like the work of many prophets, though, Albees play premiered outside his native land in a workshop production in German at the Schiller Theatre in West Germany in 1959, as part of a double bill with Samuel Becketts Krapps Last Tape.

What Albee has written in The Zoo Story is a modern morality play. The theme is the centuries?鄄old one of human isolation and salvation through sacrifice. Man in his natural state is alone, a prisoner of self. Pretending that he is not alone, he surrounds himself with things and ideas that bolster between himself and all other creatures. The good man first takes stock of himself. Once he has understood his condition, realized his animality and the limitations imposed upon him by himself, he is driven to prove his kinship with all other things and creatures. In proving this kinship is extending his boundaries, defying self, proving his humanity, since the kinship of all nature can be recognized only by the animal who has within him a spark of divinity. He finds at last, if he has been completely truthful in his search, that the only way in which he can smash the walls of his isolation and reach his fellow creatures by an act of love, a sacrifice, so great that it altogether destroys the self that imprisons him, that it kills him. Albee, in recreating this theme, creats a dialectic through the polar opposites of character, geography, fictionalities, and even props—Jerry versus Peter; the rooming house versus Central Park; freedom versus imprisonment; conformity versus confrontation.

The play starts with two men of contrasted types on a park bench. Peter in his early forties is obviously an “Average Middle Class Father”.He wears a tweed jacket, smokes a pipe, reads a book through horn?鄄rimmed glasses, and does not like conversing with strangers. He is passive, inhibited, unwilling to give up his solitude for confrontation. Living the credo of the “Organizational Man”, Peter is an upper?鄄middle?鄄class man whose job, family, and lifestyle validate the mainstream rituals of the Eisenhower 1950s. Peter lives by a routine that restricts and defines him: he works for a publisher, has a wife who prescribes his pleasures, raises two daughters, keeps two parakeets, and allots the same time each Sunday to reading in the park. Symbolically, his preference is for Time, a magazine whose title and pithy aphoristic style underscore Peters allegiance to conformity and deadlines, allowing for little expression of, or danger resulting from, individuality. Peter leads an unexamined life, devoid of risk, challenge, spirit. He is a compliant citizen. Jerry the opposite, unconventional, slightly younger and carelessly dressed, soon gives the impression of not wanting to hold on to things, of not having much that is worth holding on to. His opening lines —“Ive been to the zoo” (Albee, 15)—is a curious one, and what immediately makes the conversation theatrically interesting is a slight feeling of danger in the air. Living on the margins of society. His dialogues stresses the necessity of his transiency; “I took the subway down to the village so I could walk all the way up the Fifth Avenue to the Zoo”(Albee, 21).Jerrys goal is to secure “solitary but free passage” (Albee, 35), but at the same time he advertises the injustices to the self in a world indifferent to individuality and relationships. Most important for Jerry is saving a man like Peter from a life of emptiness .

Cages also figure prominently in Peters conventional family life. His daughter “keeps the two parakeets in a cage”. As Jerry shouts in the story, “This is probably the first time in your life youve had anything more trying to face than changing your cats toilet box”. Peters world, like Jerrys, is boxed in , packed with garbage. When Jerry tickles—and then punches—Peter, he hits him in his ribcage, reinforcing the image of Peters solitary confinement in his own skin. At first enjoying the playfulness, Peter revealing laughs, “I had my own little zoo there for a moment”. Albees minimal set of two park benches also visually suggests bars, caged areas, enclosures, symbols of Peters retreat from contact commitment.

The play ended with Jerrys death, to be exact , his sacrifice, resulting from alienation and isolation. This is a tragedy prevalent from the time Adam was born to the moment the clock stops tickling. You want it, but you never get it.

Works Cited：

[1]Christopher Bigsby, Modern American Drama: 1945——2000. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.

[2]Mel Gussow, Edward Albee: A Singular Journey. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1999.

[3]Edward Albee, The Collected Plays of Edward Albee , Volume 1 (1958-65), The Overlook Press, 2004.