International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 2, Jun 2013, 139-144 TJPRC Pvt.

. Ltd.

A STUDY OF THE ZOO STORY AS AN ABSURD AND SOCIALLY REALISTIC DRAMA

SHIPRA MALIK Associate Professor, I.I.M.T Engg. College, Meerut, Uttarpradesh, India

ABSTRACT
The article is an attempt to bring into light the elements of absurdism and social criticism in the play, The Zoo Story written by Edward Albee. Throughout the play the dramatist has adopted certain absurdist techniques to expose the artificialities and absurdities of the degenerating values of American society. Through the various themes in the work likethe lack of communication, the feeling of isolation, the lack of understanding and the spiritual and social degeneration of the values along with the existential dilemma of life and the lurking materialism etc. Albee tries to present a realistic picture of the contemporary American society.

KEYWORDS: Zoo Story an Absurd Drama, "Isolation" as a Principle Theme in Edward Albee Plays, Death-in-Life
Existence in The Zoo Story

INTRODUCTION
Edward Albee is an American playwright whose works rank among the finest in the contemporary theatre. He is the incarnation, almost the living archetype of the angry adolescent who revolts against the bourgeois milieu in which he grew up and the corrupt society with which he refuses to be integrated. Through the various themes in his works like-the lack of communication, the feeling of isolation, the lack of understanding and the spiritual and social degeneration of the values along with the existential dilemma of life and the lurking materialism etc. Albee tries to present a realistic picture of the contemporary American society. "Edward Albee", Rutenberg asserts, "writes reformist plays of social protest which unflinchingly reveal the pustulous sores of a society plagued with social ills."1 Thus, Albee is mainly a social critic who exposes through his plays the artificial values of American society dealing with power, sex, money, human relationships and institutions such as marriage, death etc. As himself said by Albee in one of his interviews, "Directly or indirectly any playwright is a kind of demonic social critic. I am concerned with altering people's perceptions, altering the status quo. All serious art interests itself in this. The self, the society should be altered by a good play. All my plays try to readjust our vision, to reorder our values.2 The dramatic milieu pervading at that time has been very well reflected through his plays. It is the atmosphere in which the playwright works. It comprises the immediate cultural situation, dramatic conventions and traditions, and the heritage of western culture- in effect, all those attitudes, ideals and traditions that determine or affect values, supply strategies and pattern human activities. The milieu appears, not as a sociological or psychological treatise or as a series of rhetorical flourishes, but dramatised in plot and personal. Though Albee's criticism is especially concerned with the present scenario of the American way of life but it can be applied to the other modern societies belonging to this universe. In other words, Albee's theatre reflects the sweep and play of a nation thinking in front of itself, of a culture seeking to locate its identity through the ritualized action implicit in the art of theatre. In his plays, Albee uses the various absurdist techniques to manipulate the themes which in turn stresses on the absurdity of the situation which the present day society is facing.

140

Shipra Malik

The Zoo Story as an Absurd Drama Although initially characterized either as a realist or an absurdist, Albee usually combines elements from the American tradition of social criticism established by such playwrights as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill with those of the theater of the absurd as practiced by Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. The Zoo Story is, an extraordinary achievement: a tour de force, it contains in miniature the central concerns of most of Albee's canon. 3 The construction of this one-act, two-character piece is economical and, unlike his many first plays, uncluttered. Jerry and Peter meet in Central park. Jerry skillfully induces Peter to listen to much of his life's story. Out of loneliness and a courageous desire to connect with something out of himself, Jerry goads Peter into a fight and kills himself upon the knife he has given to Peter. The exorbitant cost is, of course much to Albees point. The Zoo Story graphically confirms W.H. Auden's dictum, "We must love one another or die."4 The play thus, deals with isolation, a common element of life in large cities which Jerry feels challenged to combat-vigorously and aggressively, as it happens to the death. Thus, the theme of the play bears directly on a current social problem and at the same time on deeply philosophical subjects, handled by Beckett, Ionesco, and Genet-the breakdown of language, the attempt to live by illusion, the alienation of the individual from his fellows men, the terrible loneliness of every living human being. The play has a rather simple and easily comprehensible structure of three main parts that are climactically ordered. In the first part we are introduced to Jerry and Peter and to their differences with respect to person, background, economic status, marital status, literary taste, philosophy, desire for communication, the way they talk, and so on. The second part, deals with the story of Jerry and the dog, and the third is the zoo story- what happened at the zoo? The action of the entire drama is played against the background of foliage, trees, sky in Central Park in New York city on a summer Sunday afternoon in the present. There are two park benches, and Peter is seated on one of them, reading a book, his habitual activity for such afternoons. The setting is definitely pinpointed as within visibility of the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-Fourth Street, on the east side of the park, within walking distance of Peter's residence between Lexington and Third Avenue on Seventy-Fourth Street. In the absurd play: A pseudo-crisis occurs when a similar complex situation and tension is brought to a head without resolving anything, without contributing to any development or progression, serving in fact to demonstrate that nothing as meaningful as progression or development can occur, emphasizing that complexity and tension are permanent and unresolvable elements of a world of confusion. 5 Lucky's speech in Waiting for Godot is perhaps the most elaborate and extreme occurrence. Harold Pinter's work too, is full of pseudo-crisis, the funniest instance, perhaps being Davies's account of his visit to the monastery at Lutton in search of boots (The Caretaker). For Albee, as for Jerry the only fact in life is death. Jerry has lived quite a long life without anyone with whom he could communicate his feelings and share his loneliness. It is only when he meets Peter, he sees a ray of hope though he gets it at the cost of his own life. Before meeting Peter, Jerry tries hard to establish contact by describing the things which he mentions to Peter in the course of the play the dog, the landlady and various other people who he meets but the result is nothing. Albee through Jerry tries to show the futility of the relationships in this materialistic world. These relationships are mostly centered around selfishness and greed. There are no genuine emotions or means of communication. Everything is artificial and fake. Jerry is aware of all these things very well.

A Study of the Zoo Story as an Absurd and Socially Realistic Drama

141

The Death-in-Life Existence In The Zoo Story, Albee shows the death-in-life existence of the characters-Jerry and Peter. Both the characters lead in one sense or the other what is called the absurd kind of existence. Jerry had no company with whom he could share or communicate his experiences and feelings. Throughout, his life he was suffering from the pangs of isolation. There was no one with whom he could share his feelings and emotions. In the same way Peter was also suffering from this feeling of loneliness even though he had a family- wife, daughters and pets and also a good business. He was enjoying all the comforts of life but still he was unsatisfied with this kind of existence. The only difference between the two however is that, Jerry very well admits and understands this fact but Peter does not. It is only after their meeting at the park's bench that they realise the actuality of their lives. Jerry tries to reach Peter with his interesting tale of what happened at the zoo? Symbolically, zoo emerges as a man-made hell, where people are separated by bars and communication is impossible. And to demonstrate this meaning to Peter, Jerry chooses death. When Peter denies to share the bench with Jerry, the latter taunts him into anger, and lashes out finally defending himself with the knife provided by Jerry. Peter, like his Biblical namesake has brought comfort and redemption to his friend, who seals the bargain with his acceptance of death. In stabbing Jerry, Peter has bound himself in a grotesque and permanent relationship-murderer and victim became a single irrevocable fact. Jerry dies in the conviction that the paradox of human communication has been solved through an absolute commitment inspired by fear, but exalted through death. As it applies to him, the paradox has been solved; but the final point of the lesson is not quite so optimistic. Peter's betrayal and the knowledge that comes to him do not save him in any true sense, for he is more isolated, more alone than ever before. His denial of commitment is never revoked-in spite of the fact of his participation in the sacrifice; the play ends with Judas like fight. We need not follow him into his darkness to know what his suffering will be like. Whether he gets caught or not is irrelevant in this context, what is significant is the heightening of frustration to an insupportable burden, which he can never share with anyone. The conclusion of the parable is not salvation but despair. The play, depicts the absurdity of situation of human existence, by bringing into light the lives of two different characters-Jerry and Peter. Both of whom differ from each other in their way of living, social status and their attitude towards life. Jerry's world is troubled, an environment filled with suffering humanity and with a disarming mixture of love, hate and squalor. His neighbours-a coloured queen who plucks his eye-brows, the Puerto Rican family, the invisible crying woman, the landlady-function as constant reminders of those whose lives are ontologically different from Peter's. His present environment is merely a terrible extension of his past world: his mother ran away, had numerous affairs, and wound up dead; soon after, a city bus crushed his drunken father. Jerry then moved in with his aunt only to witness her death on his high school graduation day. Emotionally, a great sufferer from the very beginning of his life, he feels abandoned on all fronts. His present condition offers little sense of resolution, boundaries and solace. In fact, his relentless questions, the rapidity of speech, the quickness of breath, reveal a man who is an emotional collapse who is in the last hours of his life. His hypnotic and strange talk plainly suggests a man on the brink of madness. Thus, Albee shows Jerry as a depraved being who rarely encountered with happiness. He is a complete failure in worldly as well as non-worldly sense. He had no one in his life with whom he could associate his sense of belonging to. Jerry is thus depicted as a person who is completely unsatisfied and fully frustrated with his life. For him, there is nothing in the universe which has any value or meaning. He believes that the very idea of living in this materialistic universe is in fact absurd. It is in fact with this very feeling of isolation and dejection that he meets Peter in the park.

142

Shipra Malik

Disinterestedness and Material Concerns Peter on the other hand is depicted as a complete contrast to Jerry. He is unlike Jerry, a settled man in the most material terms. He enjoys everything which a person can wish for. He occupies a good position in society and is a well earning guy holding an executive's position in a publishing house. He is a perfect family man, fulfilling the responsibilities of a good father and husband. Peter, could go to any extent to satisfy the need of his family. But despite of all this, he is not contented with his life. He had grudges for not having a son and that he has only two daughters. Further somewhere he was not satisfied with himself too. Now that he has a family to look after, he needed more and more material things. He has to work hard to maintain his social status. Peter in the play is a representative of an upper-middle class world, which Albee assaults often in his dramatic career. Here Albee brings into light the disparity between the lower middle class and upper class prevailing at that time in the society. Albee reinforces the actionlessness of Peter's life through dialogue and stage descriptions "A man in his early forties, neither fat nor gaunt, neither handsome, nor homely." 6 By describing Peter in negatives, Albee suggests much about Peter's non-participatory stance towards any human encounter. This is why, until physically (and by extension morally) pushed regarding the bench, he tries avoiding Jerry, a strategy of avoidance that occur on a verbal as well as non verbal plane. Peter's body gestures-the constant turning away during the opening exchanges, the pretending not to hear, raising a hand to object, the winces, the forced smile serve as ways of deflecting social engagement. Jerry on the other hand, challenges such an attitude. He tries to ask numerous questions in order to demolish the sheath around him but he maintains his calm, selfish isolation. He was not at all ready to share anything with Jerry. Though Jerry ultimately captures his attention by telling him some fictional and some real facts about his life. He tells him how at every stage of his life he was rejected by this world which is in callous and absurd. All of his relations got finished with the most absurd fact of life i.e. death. He explains to him how after his failure in the human sphere, he tried to find someone outside it. The story of dog which he narrates to Peter, really makes an impact on the latter's mind. Now Peter also gets interested and shows no more of the cool disinterestedness which he was displaying earlier. He became interested in the story of Jerry and dog. Jerry lives in a rooming-house where the landlady's dog attacks him every time he comes in. He is fascinated by the dog's hatred, he responds to it with obsessive force: it is a challenge the dog is intensely concerned about him and if he can meet the challenge he may be able to create out of it the contact he is looking for. He decides first he will try to kill the dog with kindness, and if that fails he will simply kill it. He feeds it with hamburgers; its animosity doesn't diminish which is like a poignant parody of the love hate situation in romantic fiction. At last, he gives the dog a poisoned hamburger. Nothing really happens, nothing is resolved. The dog doesn't die, nor does it come to love Jerry; for a moment Jerry and dog look at each other but then the dog withdraws from contact with him; even the pressure of its hatred has gone- we neither loves nor hurt because we do not try to reach each other"( Albee72), Jerry says trying to express the agony of his need: I loved the dog now, and I wanted him to love me. I had tried to love and I had tried to kill, and both had been unsuccessful by themselvesI hoped that the dog would understand. it's just that if you can't deal with people; you have to make a start somewhere. With Animals! (much faster now, and like a conspirator)Don't you see? A person has to have some way of dealing with SOMETHING. If not with peopleSOMETHING. With a bed, with a cockroach, with a mirrorno, that's too hard, that's one of the lost steps. With a cockroach, with awith a carpet, with a roll of toilet paperno, not that eitherthat's a mirror too; always check bleeding. You see how hard it is to find things? With a street corner, and too many lights, all callous reflecting on the oily-wet streetswith a wisp of smoke, a wispof smilewithwithwith love, with vomiting, with crying, with fury

A Study of the Zoo Story as an Absurd and Socially Realistic Drama

143

because the pretty little ladies, with making money with your body, with an act of love and I could prove it; with hauling becaue you're alive, with God. How about that? With GOD WHO IS A COLOURED QUEEN WHO WEARS A KIMONO AND PLUCKS HIS EYE BORWS, WHO IS A WOMAN WHO CRIES WITH DETERMINATION BEHIND HER CLOSED DOOR with God, who, I'm told, turned his back on the whole thing some time agowithsome day, with people(Jerry sighs the next word heavily) People. With an idea; a concept. And where better, where ever better in this humiliating idea than in an entrance hall? Where? It would be a START! where better to make a beginningto understand and just possibly be understoodthan withthan with A DOG. Just that, a dogA dog .(Albee 130-2) Isolation and the Zoo Existence The story of dog in fact, runs parallel to the story of Peter and Jerry. At the end of the story when no contact could establish between Jerry and dog, Peter feels really sorry for Jerry. Thus, the cool disinterestedness which he was showing earlier to Jerry is now no more between them. Jerry's approach to him is not altogether denied as now he started answering to Jerry's probing in his personal life. Jerry asks him so many questions which he continues answering patiently. And when Jerry feels he has reached half way to his goal, he starts inciting and irritating him in order to make him active. He does not want that Peter should any more lead a vegetable kind of existence. He criticizes and pricks his consciousness by making him realize the emptiness and vacuity of his living. He tries to make him understand that the duties and responsibilities and the way of life which we are leading will one day end into nothing. Everything is temporal, and we should admit it. Although we know the result of our lives but we try to satisfy ourselves with various props which we get here on this earth. And the reason being very clear that we cannot live all alone. We need someone with whom we can share our pains and isolation. He tries to explain Peter by putting a question before him again and again-"Do you know what happened at the zoo?"(Albee58). With the description of animals in the zoo, he wanted to make him realize the condition of modern men. We also have separated ourselves like them in our own different cages. With minimum contact with one another we are trying to lead an ideal kind of existence. 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. Jerry tries to shake him up from his stupour. He wanted to tell him that we should try to face the reality without shutting the doors on it. And the reality of life, according to Jerry is death. It is death which makes this ideal communication possible. It is the communication of the soul of human being and Almighty. This communication and this true relationship is based on genuine and truthful feelings. It has a give and take relationship. It is free from all sorts of selfishness and greed. Based on two aspects-love and hate, it is unparalleled.

CONCLUSIONS
Throughout the play, Albee has shown the need for the establishment of an authentic communication and

144

Shipra Malik

understanding of the self as well as of one another to get rid of the feeling of isolation which a modern man is facing in today's society. He is leading a disappointing and an absurd kind of existence. Albee's real subject is the collapse of the spirit, the slow extinction of those anguished concern for the slow decay of love, which reflects the physical slide towards the grave. Albee through this play has tried to expose the fissures of contemporary American society by adopting various absurdist techniques. Through the story of Peter and Jerry who are true representatives of upper and middle class respectively, the dramatist has very well conveyed the social message that in this modern day society, in spite of so many modes of communication people are leading a zoo story existence. They are leading a futile and absurd life which is devoid of meaning. It is a life, where people like Peter are mad after worldly pursuits and others like Jerry are emotionally and socially defunct. All the people belonging to different social classes suffer from the same feeling of isolation and lack of communication which in turn is a result of arbitrary boundaries which every person has built around himself. We have confined ourselves in our own cages and territories. It is because of this social class consciousness and blind material pursuits that human beings suffer from the pangs of isolation and sense of futility in their lives. One day we all have to pay a heavy price for it just like Jerry in The Zoo Story. In the end of the play even Death is not able to solve the mystery of life which according to absurdists is irrational and uncertain. The idea that both existing and non- existing will lead to a similar end, makes the individual believe that his actions are very much pointless and absurd.

REFERENCES
1. 2. 3. Michael E, Rutenberg. Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest. NY:Drama Book Specialist,1969.108.Print. Richard E,Amacher.Edward Albee.Rev.ed.Boston:Twayne Publishers,n.d.21.Print. Albee,Edward. The Zoo Story.New York:Penguin Group,1959. 56. Print.All the subsequent parenthetical references in the text are to this edition. 4. Bigsby, C.W.E. Edward Albee:A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs NJ:Prentice-

Hall,1975.135.Print. 5. 6. Roudane, MatthewC.Understanding Edward Albee.Columbia:Univ. of South Carolina Press,1987.52.Print. Way, Brian. Albee and the Absurd: The American Dream and The Zoo Story. New York Times 2 April 2002:10.Print.