The Zoo Symbol Analysis

At the beginning of The Zoo Story, references to the zoo are very literal—Jerry has gone to watch the animals and wants to tell Peter about his experience. As the show goes on, however, the zoo becomes a shorthand for the way Jerry (and Peter) make sense of life: as Jerry puts it, the zoo helps him “find out more about the way people exist with animals, and the way animals exist with each other, and with people too.” But there is also an element of captivity to the idea of a zoo. Animals at the zoo can “exist” together, but only when they are separated and contained by bars; similarly, Peter’s family home is (as Jerry says) a “little zoo,” placing its members in relationship to each other but also trapping them in the norms of domesticity. 

Finally, the symbol of the zoo serves to blur the line between humans and animals. For example, Peter and Jerry imagine that the “parakeets are making the dinner…the cats are setting the table,” suggesting that it is difficult to distinguish between a human family making dinner in a house and an animal family eating dinner in a cage. It is even possible to argue that Peter and Jerry, “existing with” each other but confined (at least in Peter’s case) by the conventions of 1950s urban life, are themselves “at the zoo”—and in that case, the audience members act as the zoo-goers, watching Peter and Jerry onstage as they would a lion in a cage.