Tugas Drama

Gresna Ayu Wulandari
A 320080170
Fourth Assignment
THE ZOO STORY
BY EDWARD ALBEE

The Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks. It was originally titled Peter and Jerry. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity and dehumanization in a commercial world.
Themes
The Zoo Star, by Edward Albee details what happens when one character enters the life of another character and quickly changes it forever. In the play, Jerry confronts Peter while he sits quietly reading on a bench in Central Park; through a quick series of events, Jerry forces Peter into helping him kill himself. Layered throughout this short one-act play are three overriding themes: absurdity versus reality, alienation and loneliness, and wealth and poverty.
Absurdity and Reality
The first Theme of The Zoo Story has to do with absurdity and reality. During the beginning of the play, Jerry initiates the conversation with Peter and carefully chooses topics with which Peter will be familiar, such as family and career. However, Jerry soon begins to insert strange comments and questions into what is on the surface


Plot
Initial Situation At the beginning, Peter and Jerry meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Peter is seated on one of the benches. As the curtain rises, he is seated on the bench stage-right. He is reading a book. He stops reading, cleans his glasses, and goes back to reading.

Jerry is desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories from his life, and the reason behind his visit to the Zoo.

Conflict
When Peter states, "I really should get home; you se..." Jerry, in reaction begins to tickle Peter. Peter giggles, laughs and agrees to listen to Jerry finish telling "what happened at the zoo." Jerry stops tickling Peter, but the combination of tickling and his own mad whimsy has Peter laughing almost hysterically. As his laughter continues, then subsides, Jerry watches him, with a curious fixed smile. All at once Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench. Peter decides to scrap for his area on the bench and becomes irritated. Suddenly, Jerry pulls a knife on Peter, and then drops it as idea for Peter to arrest. When Peter holds the knife defensively, Jerry charges him and run through himself on the knife.

Climax / Ending
In the end of this drama, Peter runs away from Jerry whose dying words” Oh ... my ... God…,,” he shakes his head and speak; a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication. Jerry is dead.

Point of view
Though all works of literature present the author’s point of view, they don’t all have a narrator or a narrative voice that ties together and presents the story. This particular piece of literature does not have a narrator through whose eyes or voice we learn the story. The narrator is just telling the story.
Style
Style of drama is the shaping of dramatic material, setting, or costumes in a specific manner. Each play will have its own unique and distinctive behaviors, dress, and language of the characters. The style of a playwright is shown in the choices made in the world of the play: the kinds of characters, time periods, settings, language, methods of characterization, use of symbols, and themes.

In this drama, the actor, Peter wears tweeds, smokes a pipe, and carries horn-rimmed glasses. Although he is moving into middle age, his dress and his manner would suggest a man younger.
Jerry, what was once a trim and lightly muscled body has begun to go to fat and while he is no longer handsome, it is evident that he once was. His fall from physical grace should not suggest debauchery. He has; to come closest to it, a great weariness.

Conclusion
The Zoo Story drama tells man and society. From the drama, can be take the lesson that someone who lives in inhuman, brutal and cruel society can drives someone to his fatal deed isolation and a lack of communication. Those are the most serious problems of modern society. Everybody needs somebody he can talk to; otherwise he becomes crazy and is driven to such a fatal deed

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.