Robert Sean Leonard and Paul Parks in a 2018 off-Broadway production of “The Zoo Story” (photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times).

First line of The Zoo Story

JERRY: I went to the zoo today.

Last line of The Zoo Story

PETER: Oh my god-

JERRY: Oh my god.

The Zoo Story tackles complacency within American life and how an attempt at human connection, which was once such an innate, animalistic instinct, has now turned into an “absurdist theater comedy.” Jerry is an antihero. One that we would initially avoid on subways but ultimately feel for as the story progresses. We presume that his oversharing must relate to mania, that his questions must be criticism rather than a difference in vocab and context between two humans.

The question behind why Jerry went to the zoo that day is never answered until the very last minutes of the play. The first line,  “I went to the zoo today” embarks us on an hour-long story with Jerry talking to Peter, a man who is sitting on a park bench in Central Park, NYC. The play attempts to make a connection between Jerry and the audience, but one that is absent between Jerry and Peter. Jerry shares his personal life with Peter: his boarding house, his disgust for his landlady, and the grand finale story of Jerry and the Dog. 

HIS BOARDING HOUSE

Jerry lives in, a “four-storey brownstone rooming house on the upper West Side” with a bedroom that has been split in half by a beaverwood wall. Jerry lives in close quarters with, “a colored queen” whose only tasks are to, “pluck his eyebrows, wear his kimono and go to the john.” This emotional separation despite the sharing of one bedroom (even if there is a beaverwood wall between them) drains Jerry as one of his instances of failed human connection. 

JERRY: “… are some letters … please letters … please why don’t you do this, and please when will you do that letters. And when letters, too. When will you write? When will you come? When? These letters are from more recent years.”

Jerry reveals he’s been writing letters to someone unknown about when they will be able to contact him. There are allusions to God throughout this play, since Jesus’ mission was to establish connection with people. 

HIS LANDLADY

Edward Albee makes careful choices with the characters that he includes within this play. At first, I thought that the landlady was a throwaway character that just served for Jerry to condemn, further characterizing him as more of an antihero. However, Jerry’s description of the landlady serves as a method of escapism to how people cope with loneliness.

JERRY: “But I have found a way to keep her off. When she talks to me, when she presses herself to my body and mumbles about her room and how I should come there, I merely say: but, Love; wasn’t yesterday enough for you, and the day before? Then she puzzles, she makes slits of her tiny eyes, she sways a little, and then, Peter … and it is at this moment that I think I might be doing some good in that tormented house … a simple-minded smile begins to form on her unthinkable face, and she giggles and groans as she thinks about yesterday and the day before; as she believes and relives what never happened.”

Today, the imagination of connection is enough to satisfy oneself:

• Parasocial relationships within social media (community-created content on Twitch, YouTube, etc.)
• celebrity and internet culture (casually fashioned interviews, Q&A live streams, Cameos)
• #makeinstagramcasual (Corporate America, for-profit businesses using social media)

Jerry uses the hoax of human connection to prevent any real connection towards his landlady- ironic. And because of this, he turns bitter towards her. Similar to how proclaimed simps of internet celebrities turn violent. 

JERRY AND THE DOG

Jerry’s true nature of being the antihero truly shines through within the story Jerry and the Dog. Because he’s not able to establish a connection with the dog, he attempts to kill it. The dog doesn’t die, but it no longer runs after him in the hallways anymore. Jerry insists that the dog and he understand each other now. They do not connect on a superficial level, “the dog has returned to garbage, and I to solitary but free passage,” but they understand that each other has attempted. That, “perhaps, was the dog’s attempt to bite me not an act of love?” 

Jerry visits the zoo after this, to understand how humans and animals can connect. But even the zoo has bars, and Jerry walks north. He orchestrates the entire conversation with Peter beforehand as a way to establish one last, determining connection. However, his attempt leads to failure and Jerry then kills himself with his last words being, “Oh my, god.”

We understand how similar both Jerry and Peter are to each other by the end of the play when they mirror each other’s words to each other. The stark difference is Peter’s inability to become vulnerable with the other, rejecting the establishment of connection. Albee’s work consistently pokes at modern American life. In Zoo Story, it’s the attempt at modern-day human connection accompanied by biases and perceptions of MAN-MADE CONCEPTS (race, social classes) that prevent us from reaching out to one another. 

Resources: 

Albee, Edward. The Zoo Story: A Play. Jan. 1959

Dodson, Michelle. “The Zoo Story.” Edward Albee Society, edwardalbeesociety.org/works/the-zoo-story/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2023.