The Zoo Story (1961), by Edward Albee, is a play with two characters, Jerry and Peter, the names of two of his friends. The play, with its black humor, has an air of abandon about it. For his material, Albee drew upon his own poverty and his experiences while working as a Western Union delivery boy. This paper discusses how in the play, Albee created the menacing, world-weary, but highly articulate Jerry, to give unfettered expression to his sharply critical view of the conventional, bourgeois world, embodied by Peter. Albee gives us a peep into the inner life of Jerry and Peter and how their sensibilities respond to the existential choices that have to be made. In the play, the searchlight is on the fundamental human values. Albee uses Jerry to voice his own anger, just as John Osborne used Jimmy Porter to attack the social, political, economic, and religious notions prevalent during his time. Jerry's language, like Jimmy's, is quite acerbic and aggressive, something that the American audiences were not used to. Despite its brevity, The Zoo Story established itself as emblematic of the age that produced it. A parable of alienation and spiritual dislocation, the play dramatizes the way people exist, afraid of aloneness, yet equally wary of making contact. Thus, by juxtaposing the opposites, the play is able to generate much of its tension.

In February 1958, one month before his birthday, Edward Albee sat down to write a play. For the first time in his life, writing appeared to flow from some inner need and compulsion. The moment he wrote the first line, everything happened swiftly in a sort of explosion. It took Albee two-and-a-half weeks to finish The Zoo Story (1961), a play with two characters Jerry and Peter, the names of two of his friends.

Peter is the passive listener, living on the East Side of New York City. He is an example of an upper middle-class man who is contented and comfortable because his world is well organized. Like most people of his social category, he is successful. Very little upsets him because he has insulated himself against all experience that might impinge upon his secure and easy family life. Jerry, on the other hand, is the active speaker. Living as he does on the West Side of New York City, he has exposed himself to the vagaries of life's experience. His is a harsh, abrasive, and fragmented world. A loner, he is constantly searching for meaning. His mind is a storehouse of private and public issues which are constantly debated. Jerry is a protestor who is thoroughly disenchanted with the values of his society. As a result, he has alienated himself from everyone.

It is Sunday. Seated on a bench in the solitude of Central Park is Peter, in his early forties, a Madison Avenue type textbook editor who lives on the Upper East Side, reading a book, when he is rudely disturbed by Jerry, who comes from nowhere and inflicts himself upon Peter, abruptly announcing, "I have been to the zoo. MISTER, I'VE BEEN TO THE ZOO" (Albee, 1961, p. 12). Taken aback, Peter asks, "Hm? … What? … I'm sorry, were you talking to me?" (Ibid.). It is with this arresting situation, though bizarre, that the play opens and there is not a dull moment thereafter. Normally reticent and rather poor at expressing himself, Peter is initially unwilling to further the conversation, but out of politeness, he makes brief replies. His responses tend to follow a fixed pattern or a formula. Even his politeness, punctuated with "Yes sir" and "No sir," is carefully rehearsed and is in the nature of a stock response born out of his upbringing. Jerry is hugely amused by this and mildly jeers him by repeating some of his stock phrases.

American Literature Journal, Zoo Story, Social Obligations, Patriarchal Society, Urban Society, Buddhist Concentration, Bloodshot Eyes, Paradoxical Link, Mutual Violence, Sociopolitical Tracts, Human Alienation.