The Zoo Story: Albee's Attack on Fiction

The Zoo Story: Albee's Attack on Fiction ROBERT S. WALLACE • IN A WIDELY PUBLISHED ARTICLE ENTITLED "What's the Matter with Edward Albee?" Thomas Driver attacks the basic situation of The Zoo Story maintaining that Peter's passive acceptance of Jerry's aggressive behavior is illogical and unrealistic. Driver states that no "sane, average-type person would be a passive spectator in the presence of behavior obviously headed towards destructive violence."! In the same article Driver makes a similar criticism of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? arguing the improbability of Nick and Honey's remaining at George and Martha's when the older couple obviously "want only to fight the whole night through.,,2 Driver's criticism of both plays misses a fact which is central to their development and to an understanding of Albee's work in general. Peter remains on the park bench for the same reason that Nick and Honey remain at George and Martha's: he is entertained by story-telling, particularly when the story-teller is very obviously his opposite. Simple in itself, this fact has complex ramifications when one understands Albee's purpose in writing: basically he is attacking the fictions which North American society has developed to escape the alienation and discord which he views as modern urban realities. In his preface to The American Dream, he states this purpose most succinctly: The play is an attack against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen.3 The use of "fiction" here is not an arbitrary one. What concerns Albee is the vicarious experiencing of life which prevents the individual's real and meaningful communication with others. Such vicarious experience is most often acpieved through stories, either in print or on the stage. Driver asks: "Why doesn't Nick ... take his young wife and go home?,,4 The answer also applies to the audience: they would rather watch life than experience it. 49 50 ROBERT S. WALLACE Albee's attack on fiction as a substitute for life is developed throughout The Zoo Story in such a way that the audience will come to understand not only Peter's dependence on fiction but its own as well. Albee has acknowledged that it is "one of the responsibilities of playwrights to show people how they are and what their time is like in the hope that perhaps they'll change it."s To achieve this end in The Zoo Story, Albee attempts simultaneously to involve the audience with the stage illusion and to alienate them from it. Regarding the dramatic effect of his plays, Albee has said: You can teach at the same time as you are engaging. I think perhaps the entire theory of alienation is a little misunderstood by the majority of the people who use the term. Of course, it is not an attempt to alienate the audience but merely an attempt to keep the audience at a sufficient distance so that two things are happening simultaneously, that the audience is being objective about the experience it is having.6 In The Zoo Story, this simultaneous reaction is developed by deliberately frustrating the audience's expectations and thus creating for them a discomfort which is akin to Peter's. This is appropriate in that Peter serves as audience to Jerry's "Zoo Story" on the stage just as the audience does in the theatre. The discomfort Peter experiences during The Zoo Story results from Jerry's truthful description of his life and his attempts to communicate. Such a life is alien to him for he has escaped the loneliness Jerry describes by accepting the illusions of harmony and happiness that his lifestyle supports. After Jerry describes his landlady, Peter says, "It's so ... unthinkable. I find it hard to believe that people such as that really are" (p. 28). Jerry replies, "It's for reading about, isn't it?" (p. 28); later he says "And fact is better left to fiction" (p. 29). This last line is a pithy summation of Jerry's position in the playas well as an ironical comment on Peter's attitude towards reality. The line reiterates Jerry's earlier speech...