The Bench Symbol Analysis

All of the action of the play takes place on and around a park bench in Central Park—in fact, the show’s central conflict ultimately revolves around whether the erratic Jerry can forcibly take this bench from Peter, who sits on it every Sunday. The park bench, designed for leisurely park afternoons, is typically a symbol of civilized, evolved humanity: people, unlike animals, can build parks and benches and read books while sitting on them. It follows, then, that at the beginning of The Zoo Story, mild-mannered Peter sits on the bench while Jerry, lacking self-control, paces around it. Yet when Jerry tries to take over the bench, Peter sees it as an attack on his “manhood” and responds with instinctive aggression, becoming animalistic about an object that initially signaled human advancement. In depicting a fatal fight over a bench—“this iron and this wood,” as Jerry calls it, highlighting the object’s phallic undertones—the Zoo Story seems to imply that people’s attempts to master their primal instincts are never fully successful.