Name : Maula Akhadin
NIM : A 320080273
Class : H
The Zoo Story
1. The Characters
a. Peter : A man in his early forties, married, embarrassed, childish, serious person.
b. Jerry : A man in late thirties, unmarried, insecure, verbally aggressive.
2. Plot
Tone of book is humorous. The Zoo Story is a confrontation between middle-class America and the outcasts of society. Jerry tries to teach Peter the realities of life that Peter has tried to ignore. He tries to teach Peter the nature of human existence and relationships. Through a serious of failed conversations and misinterpretations of the act of love, Jerry begins his experiment to see if the middle class Americas are animals after all.
3. Setting
Set in central park, New York.
4. Style
Mostly dialog, Person - rotating 1st, a lot of play on words, a lot of stream of consciousness, generic/vague references to death/punishment, moderately detailed references to deaths.
5. Theme/ issues
Jerry′ s problems and aims:
Problems:
- he feels lonely
- he lacks company
- he has no one to talk to
- he feels misunderstood
- he desperately tries to come into contact with other people
- he is an outsider, utterly depressed, unhappy
- he is unable to establish a relationship with other people.
Aims:
- he tries to establish a relationship with another person
- he tries to befriend somebody
Reasons for Jerry′ s inability to make friends/for his loneliness:
- childhood experiences (no real family life in his youth)
- psychological problems (he cannot deal with other people)
- anonymity/impersonality of a big city
- alienation of the individual in big cities/in modern society
- big gap between the haves and the have-nots
Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets who lives in ignorance of the world outside his settled life. jerry is an isolated and disheartened man who lives in a boarding house and is very play the zoo story.
6. Conclusion
There is a similarity between the way in which animals live in the zoo and the way in which human beings live together/communicate with one another. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, social disparity and dehumanisation in a commercial world. The end of the story, Jerry has succeeded in establishing a relationship with another human being (with Peter) under absurd (lethal, suicidal fight; planned "murder-suicide" (after the "story" with the dog Jerry is disillusioned and plans his death carefully) circumstances and for a very short time (at the moment of dying). MAN VS SOCIETY