Civilization and Humans vs. Instinct and Animals Theme Analysis

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 competition between these views of humanity: are people inherently civilized as Peter seems to believe, or is Peter’s fixation on manners and norms merely an attempt to repress his animalistic nature? Ultimately, as Jerry’s erratic behavior goads Peter into animalistic physical violence, the play suggests the impossibility of controlling animal instincts—and the harm that can come from those instincts.  

From the beginning, the play blurs the distinction between human and animal. This is evident in the play’s opening line: “I’ve been to the zoo,” Jerry announces, “MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO.” The zoo represents human mastery of nature and the notion that humans and animals can be neatly separated. But Jerry is shouting this line at a stranger in public, which undermines the notion than humans are more civilized than animals. Furthermore, as Peter explains his nuclear family, his high salary, and his established professional life, he also informs Jerry that he has pets: two cats, and two parakeets which his daughters keep in a “cage in their bedroom.” The fact that his human family lives alongside animals (and that the animals might even be part of the family) undermines the neat distinction between humans and animals. In fact, later in the play, these animals become the subject of one of Peter’s only jokes: “the parakeets will be getting dinner ready soon,” he laughs to Jerry, “and the cats are setting the table.” The joke posits that animals can behave like proper humans while Peter’s behavior suggests the inverse: as he jokes, he has degenerated from a proper man reading on a park bench into someone laughing manically in public and telling nonsensical jokes, further demonstrating that he’s not so different from an animal himself. Finally, the title of the play also makes this point. Albee has chosen to call this The Zoo Story, but not a single animal ever appears onstage. This title then positions the audience as the zoo-goers—and the human beings onstage as the creatures in the zoo.

Given this similarity between humans and animals, the play suggests that repression is central to maintaining the illusion that humans aren’t animals. Jerry’s early, offhand reference to Freud is telling. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist famous for his theory of the id, the ego, and the superego, in which the superego enforces socially acceptable behavior by suppressing the id (human instinct). By referencing Freud, Jerry is highlighting the contrast between Peter’s civilized life and the internal, animalistic drives that Freud believed all humans share. And the play suggests that this kind of repression is associated with serious danger. When Peter tells Jerry about his pets, Jerry points out that the cats might eat the parakeets were it not for the cages. This emphasizes that animal instincts—in this case, the cats’ desire to eat the parakeets—might destroy their home if Peter didn’t literally lock the animals up. Of course, taken as a metaphor, this suggests that Peter’s own animal instincts are locked up—and that they might be dangerous if they ever got free.

At the end of the play, Peter stops repressing his animal side, and it does get dangerous. It first becomes clear that Peter has changed when, due to Jerry tickling him, he loses total control over his body and his powers of speech; he can only say “hee hee hee,” a striking loss of words for a man who works in publishing. And shortly afterwards, the two men fight physically over the park bench, just as dogs would fight over their territory. What began as a civilized day of reading in the park has devolved into a physical brawl—a brawl that ends with Jerry getting fatally stabbed. While he’s dying, Jerry tells Peter that “you’re not really a vegetable. It’s all right, you’re an animal. You’re an animal, too.” The crucial word “too” can be read in several different ways: Jerry might be implying that Jerry and Peter are both animals, or he might be implying that Peter, in addition to being a husband and father and publisher, is also a man of instinct. But either way, Jerry is implying that the horrifying violence that has just occurred is actually normal and Peter shouldn’t feel bad; it’s just his animal nature.

This ending reveals the true meaning of the play’s title: even the most outwardly civilized people can and do fall prey to the animal instincts they think they have left behind. The crucial question the play poses, then, is what to do with this knowledge—do we acknowledge these sometimes frightening impulses, or do we continue to try to master and suppress them?