[The essay below examines whether "the central tragedy of The Zoo Story reside[s] in the fact that in modern life the very concept of love has been distorted and corrupted and that both halves of polarized society are equally incapable of communication."]

If we can so misunderstand, well then, why have we invented the word love in the first place.

Jerry in The Zoo Story

Edward Albee's The Zoo Story centers about two themes: the polarization of modern society and the difficulty of human communication. To date, most commentators have viewed Peter, the representative of "those who have," the insiders of modern society, as the chief obstacle to any real communication; whereas Jerry is seen as one filled with compassion for his fellow beings, willing to sacrifice himself to save them. For example, for Rose Zimbardo, Jerry is a Christ-figure in a "modernized scene of Gethsemane" and the theme is one of "human isolation and salvation through sacrifice."¹ Peter she conceives as Everyman who will not reveal his true self for fear of being "known" as a person. Jerry, on the other hand, is seen as desperately desiring to "know," to reach an understanding with another. Charles R. Lyons sees Jerry as attempting two means to establish some contact: "compassion" (with the dog) and "an act of sacrifice" (with Peter).² Jerry's sacrifice is compassionate, Lyons maintains, because "it functions to initiate Peter into an acute awareness of his reality."³ George E. Wellwarth adds another dimension to this portrait of a compassionate, self-sacrificing character when he notes that Jerry represents for him "the person cursed (for in our society it undoubtedly is a curse) with an infinite capacity for love" and thus he sees the drama as "about the maddening effect that enforced loneliness of the human condition" has on such a person.⁴

But if Jerry, representative of the alienated, the permanent transient, "the outsider," does indeed have such an "infinite capacity for love," why then do all his attempts to achieve communication fail? Does the fault always lie with the other—with all "the pretty little girls," with the dog, as well as with Peter? Or perhaps is Jerry himself, the other half of polarized society, at least equally culpable for the isolated condition, the zoo of cages each man constructs for himself?

Perhaps Jerry's universal predicament is best summarized by Eric Fromm in The Art of Loving:

Man—of all ages and cultures—is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to overcome the separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one's own individual life and find atonement.⁵

The "solution" is of course to overcome separateness through "love," but this essentially involves giving, not receiving. Longfellow remarked that love gives itself; it is not bought, bringing to mind the New Testament, which tells us that God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. This giving, in Fromm's words, "implies to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life."⁶ Thus the question arises: if man is impotent, that is, unable to produce love in another or he himself the object of love, may it not be because he has not truly given of himself or perhaps has found that he is incapable of such selflessness? On this point it is necessary to analyze closely the pattern of Jerry's attempts to "love," in the sense of establishing an "I/Thou" relationship with another.

Essentially our knowledge of these attempts falls into three categories. First, scattered throughout the play we have a series of facts about his past and present life. Second, in the lengthy sequence of "Jerry and the Dog" we hear of his deeds—since communication with an animal must be established by deeds, not words. Finally, there is the main action of the piece, an essentially verbal confrontation with Peter.

Jerry provides us with some facts about his past life. He has, for example, "two picture frames, both empty," symbolic of course of the emptiness of his own life. But when questioned by Peter, he maintains that there isn't "anyone to put in" the frames. He has apparently given his love to no one. Peter suggests the natural objects of "parents" or a "girlfriend," but Jerry can relate to neither. Abandoned by his mother, he rejects not only her but also his father (who, despondent over his wife's desertaion, had turned to drink) and the aunt who cared for him (but incoveniently died the day of his high-school graduation!). Where is Jerry's compassion for these two? Why does he comment: "I have no feelings about any of it that I care to admit to myself? Moreover, in his relations with "the pretty little ladies," it is apparently only a purely sexual, never a personal relationship he attempts to achieve: "I've never been able to have sex … to make love to anybody more than once." How is his desperate drive to truly "know" another exemplified here? Only once, he tells us, was he able to sustain a relationship for any duration and then only an adolescent homosexual one. Such a relationship tends to suggest the attraction of a "mirror image"; moreover, since the park superintendant's son's "birthday was the same," the two would seem to be symbolic twins. This indicates an egotistical union in which the individuals involved identify themselves with each other, merely enlarging the single individual into two, a relationship which hardly fulfills the ideal selfless character of genuine love.

"The Story of the Dog" provides an opportunity to observe the more recent pattern of Jerry's actions as he attempts to forge a new bond. He offers hamburgers to the starving beast, the "gatekeeper" of his apartment, but what is his motivation: compassion or bribery? Certainly his words reflect no genuine affection: "I decided first I'll kill the dog with kindness and if that doesn't work … I'll just kill him." However, the natural instincts of the animal apparently inform him that there is no love involved, that the meat is not a free gift, and thus he does not change his response to the man. Rejected, Jerry turns to violence, poisoning the beast. And then Jerry himself suddenly asks, "Was trying to feed the dog an act of love?" The episode seems to have led to a new understanding. Now he ponders: "Perhaps was the dog's attempt to bite me not an act of love?" Moreover, Jerry has made an even more startling discovery for only after committing violence he tells Peter: "I loved the dog now and wanted him to love me!"

Feeling he has gained insight from this experience, the alienated now attempts a verbal confrontation with the "establishment," personified by Peter. One half of polarized society reaches out to forge a union. At first the confrontation follows, in words, much the same pattern as the sequence with the dog. Because Jerry was, as he tells Peter at the end, "so afraid I'd drive you away … you'd go away and leave me," he offers a bribe. If Peter remains he will be told the mysterious "zoo story." Each time Peter starts to retreat, the enticement is repeated:

Jerry: Don't go. You're not thinking of going, are you?

Peter: Well… no, I don't think so.

Jerry: [as if to a child] Because after I tell you about the dog, do you know what then? Then… then I'll tell you about what happened at the zoo.

As earlier Jerry had demanded that the dog move, abandon his defense of the passageway, so now he repeatedly commands Peter to "move over," to give up his bench: "Get off this bench, Peter, I want it."

So far the sequence with Peter has closely paralleled that of Jerry and the dog. But the pattern is suddenly broken. Jerry impales himself on the outstretched knife held by Peter as that symbol of the social "status quo" strives to defend himself against the violence of "the outsider" who seems to threaten his very existence. Visually of course the picture recalls the sexual act with the outstretched knife serving as a phallic symbol. And for Jerry this apparently is the consummation of a perverse kind of "love."

Jerry had found the dog's attacks, his attempts at "contact," preferable to indifference; thus he forces Peter to overcome the separateness, to make contact. Moreover, from the earlier experience Jerry had learned that the initial violence toward the dog was followed by a certain kind of love for the beast. Jerry now seems deliberately to assume the role of the victim, apparently hoping that Peter, now placed in the murderer's role, will come to feel a sense of oneness with him. Obviously at the end Jerry does give totally of himself but what is the actual motivation behind this "gift"? Does he die to redeem the Peters of this world or to become the object of a relationship which insures he will remain forever in the mind, if not the heart, of another? Is this not the essence of the "zoo story" which the dying Jerry tells Peter:

I think this is what happened at the zoo … I think that while I was at the zoo I decided to walk north… until I found you.… And now you know what you'll see in your TV, and the face I told you about… my face, the face you see right now.

Incapable of forging a normal I/Thou relationship, Jerry has turned to the perversion of a murderer/victim bond. For by his very nature man needs to love in order to overcome separateness in union with another, and apparently Jerry can find no other way to fulfill his nature. But he is not just one individual case; he is a universal symbol of the alienated modern man. He is not the only one who desires to be the object of love but seems incapable of giving of himself in the normal sense. There is his landlady who can only make purely physical overtures and must be content with the fantasy of what "happened the day before." There is the colored queen who 'plucks his eyebrows," "wears a kimono," and "goes to the John," but for some reason "never has anyone up to his room." There is the lady "who cries with determination behind her closed door." Moreover Jerry finds himself surrounded by material things which are incomplete: empty picture frames; a strong box without a lock; a typewriter that prints nothing but capital letters. Don't all these symbolize and reinforce the incompleteness and unnatural predicament of impotent modern man who can not love?

In The Testament of Samuel Beckett, Josephine Jacobsen and William Mueller noted that Beckett uses parodies of love scenes to evoke the most mirthless laughs. And the authors commented:

… we are struck hard by the writhing irony of the affirmation that the world is so deficient in love.… Yet we know that love, in one or another of its manifestations is the source of the greatest tragedy as of comedy … for in love man feels he comes closest to the divine essence.⁷

Apparently in Albee's eyes this is also a great tragedy of modern man's condition. In The American Dream, his Young Man tells of an inability to "feel" or to love in the normal sense. Yet, at the same time, he expresses the need to be the object of love:

I accept the syntax around me, for while I know I cannot relate … I know I must be related to. I let people love me.… I let them draw pleasure … from the fact of me … but that is all it comes to.…I can feel nothing.… And it will always be thus.

His condition is reminiscent of Jerry's.

Doesn't the central tragedy of The Zoo Story reside in the fact that in modern life the very concept of love has been distorted and corrupted and that both halves of polarized society are equally incapable of communication? Isn't the distinction between Peter and Jerry that whereas the former wishes to retain the "status quo," remaining detached and "separated from all the animals" in the zoo, the latter is desperately driven to be the object of love but, like the Young Man in The American Dream, has lost the ability to feel and can not relate? Moreover, The Zoo Story appears to pose an even more critical problem. Here we see that when alienated man is driven to overcome separateness yet finds himself incapable of doing so, he turns to violence in a last desperate effort to establish some semblance of contact. Albee leaves unanswered the final question: Is such a perversion of love the only method left whereby modern man can bridge the gap, unite with another, communicate?

Notes

¹"Symbolism and Naturalism in Edward Albee's The Zoo Story," in Twentieth Century Literature, VIII, 1962, pp. 10-17.

²See "Two Projections of the Isolation of the Human Soul: Brecht's Im Dickicht Der Staedte and Albee's The Zoo Story," in Drama Survey, IV, 1965, pp. 121-138.

³'Ibid., p. 135.

⁴The Theatre of Protest and Paradox, New York, 1964, p. 276.

⁵New York, 1956, p. 9.

⁶Ibid., p. 25.

⁷New York, 1964, p. 98.