Alienation and Understanding
The Zoo Story is one long conversation between Peter, a middle-class and mild-mannered publishing executive reading on a park bench, and Jerry, a poor and unconventional man who approaches him. As Peter and Jerry discuss family life, Jerry’s troubled relationship with a dog, and a mysterious event at the zoo, they struggle to communicate. Even when they try to bridge the gaps between their different life experiences, they often misunderstand or…
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Civilization and Humans vs. Instinct and Animals
In The Zoo Story, two humans—mild-mannered Peter and unconventional Jerry—have a conversation on a park bench. Peter (the one with a stable, middle-class life and an attachment to social norms) embodies the notion that humankind is civilized, and Jerry (with his odd social manner, unpredictable impulses, and his fixation on animals) represents the possibility that humankind might be more animalistic than we think. As the play progresses, it becomes something of a…
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Simple Categorization vs. Messy Reality
In The Zoo Story, Peter, a mild-mannered publishing executive reading on a park bench, tries to make sense of Jerry, the unconventional man who approaches him and strikes up a conversation. As they talk, Peter tries to understand and “pigeonhole” Jerry—but Jerry insists that he cannot be put in a box or easily categorized. Over the course of the play, Jerry proves that real life is more complicated than the textbooks Peter edits—in…
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Masculinity, Insecurity, and Violence
Peter and Jerry live wildly different lives: Peter is married with daughters while Jerry is single and unsure of his own sexuality. Peter is a middle-class textbook publisher while Jerry is poor and his source of income is never revealed. But as they talk in the park, it becomes clear that they have something in common: insecurities around masculinity and sex. Whenever one of them alludes to the complexities of manhood and male sexuality, the…
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Logic vs. Faith
Peter is a rational textbook publisher who spends every Sunday not at church but reading on a bench in the park. He views the world as orderly and rational, and he seems to have no use for inexplicable things like spirituality. By contrast, Jerry behaves erratically, asks unanswerable questions that unnerve Peter, and brings up God and faith at several key moments in the play, gesturing to his belief that the world cannot be rationally…
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