Simple Categorization vs. Messy Reality Theme Analysis

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 addition to revealing surprising information about his own life, Jerry ultimately pushes Peter to violence, demonstrating that even predictable Peter can behave unpredictably and his personality can be difficult to neatly classify. As Peter’s mission to label and “pigeonhole” others is continually thwarted throughout the play, The Zoo Story illustrates that such categorization, while comforting, is never actually reflective of reality.

Peter feels safe when he believes that he understands how things work, so he loves to try to categorize the world. His job reflects this way of thinking; Peter works as an executive at a textbook publishing house. Textbooks exist to break down and simplify complicated concepts, usually diluting or distorting their nuance in the process. That Peter has an “executive position” suggests he is incredibly skilled at and committed to this kind of simplification. Throughout their conversation, Peter relentlessly tries to categorize Jerry in this same way. For instance, Peter initially assumes that Jerry lives in the Village because this helps him make sense of why Jerry is the way he is: eccentric people live in the Village, so this must explain Jerry’s eccentricity. But Jerry actually lives in a neighborhood of much stuffier character, and he seems offended by Peter’s assumption. “What were you trying to do?” he asks. “Make sense out of things? Bring order? The old pigeonhole bit?” Later, after Jerry has explained his complicated view of sex, Peter volunteers that “it all seems perfectly simple to me”—again demonstrating his desire to turn messy life into textbook “simplicity.”

Yet even as Peter tries to do the “old pigeonhole bit,” Jerry consistently reveals the ways in which real life defies such easy classification. When explaining his circuitous route through the city, for instance, Jerry informs Peter that “sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.” Metaphorically, this suggests that the obvious, “simple” explanation is often not the “correct” one—real understanding, according to Jerry, moves in zig-zag lines. Jerry also explicitly mocks the neat categories Peter bases his life on. For example, Jerry muses about the difference between “upper-middle-middle-class and lower-upper-middle-class,” a joke that upsets Peter because it reveals the absurdity of such contrived, arbitrary divisions. Even Jerry’s criticism of the zoo—“everyone separated by bars from everyone else”—suggests his frustration with categorization (a zoo is a very literal form of “pigeonholing,” as it puts each species in its own box). The zoo can even be viewed as a real-life textbook, the very thing Peter works on and the thing Jerry seems to most rebel against.

The violence at the end of the play seems to validate Jerry’s perspective, since both men begin to act uncharacteristically. Towards the end of their interaction, Peter—who is normally so settled and calm—begins to physically fight with Jerry about the park bench, prompting Jerry to declare that “you’re not really a vegetable; you’re an animal.” In invoking these categories, Jerry makes clear that no person can ever be so easily labeled and understood. And, like Peter, Jerry also acts against type in the play’s final scenes. As he dies, “his expression seems to change. His features relax,” and “he smiles.” Whereas for most of the show, Jerry has appeared to be unsettled and sometimes downright disturbed, in his dying moment, he reaches a state of inner peace. Moreover, while at the beginning of the play Peter was cordial while Jerry was loud and inappropriate, now Jerry is the one who acts in a socially acceptable way: he thanks Peter several times, and even reminds Peter to take his book as he flees. Just as Peter contains repressed violence, then, Jerry is capable of warmth and politeness. 

The zoo exists to categorize and explain its animal inhabitants, but The Zoo Story makes clear that such categorization is not possible in the real world, where there are no bars to separate people. Instead, the play suggests that the complicated answer is always more revelatory than the simple one, and that a “textbook” approach to life deprives those who hold it of true understanding.