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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.
The Bench Quotes in The Zoo Story
The The Zoo Story quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Bench. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Zoo Story
Quotes
JERRY: You have everything in the world you want; you’ve told me about your home, and your family, and your own little zoo. You have everything, and now you want this bench. Are these the things men fight for? Tell me, Peter, is this bench, this iron and this wood, is this your honor? Is this the thing in the world you’d fight for? Can you think of anything more absurd?
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Zoo Story LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Bench Symbol Timeline in The Zoo Story
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Bench appears in The Zoo Story. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Zoo Story
...way—“neither fat nor gaunt, neither handsome nor homely”—is spending his Sunday afternoon reading on a bench in Central Park. A disheveled stranger named Jerry, with an air of “great weariness” about...
(full context)
...finishes his monologue, Jerry sits down—for the first time in the entire play—on the same bench as Peter.
(full context)
...zoo. But every few sentences, Jerry pokes Peter increasingly hard—until he has almost the entire bench and Peter, annoyed, is crowded into a corner. Jerry begins to explain how the lion...
(full context)
...like this, and Jerry declares “I’m crazy, you bastard.” Jerry explains that he wants this bench to himself, and if Peter wants to hear the rest of the story, he will...
(full context)
Jerry insists that he wants the bench, and he scoffs when Peter tries to argue that people cannot get everything they want....
(full context)
Jerry tells Peter to “give me my bench,” but Peter yells back that it is “MY BENCH.” When Jerry pushes Peter almost all...
(full context)
...Peter, telling him that he will never again be able to sit on his “precious bench.” Peter, now furious, insists that he wants the bench even if it does not make...
(full context)
Jerry asks Peter why he cares about the bench, since he already has “everything in the world you want, your home, and your family,...
(full context)
...any idea about “what other people need.” Peter insists that Jerry does not need the bench; Peter feels that he needs the bench because he has been coming to it for...
(full context)
Still sitting on the bench, Jerry muses that Peter has a “certain dignity” about him. Jerry then rises, agreeing to...
(full context)
...begins to cry. Jerry tells Peter that he has been “dispossessed”: he has lost his bench, but he has kept his honor. Jerry also murmurs that Peter is not “really a...
(full context)
