Kenneth Krauss's The Zoo Story

The Zoo Story is said to be" the most impressive debut ever made by an American dramatist" (Bigsby 129). The title of the play, The Zoo Story, is a significant title as it shows that it is not a story about someone who visits the zoo and sees the animals, but it shows how the protagonist, Jerry, lives with his neighbors. Although they are living in a rooming house, they are isolated from each other in their rooms, like animals, and unable to "form relationship even with the landlady 's dog" (Hayman 189), like the animals in the zoo who live in cages. Kenneth Krauss says " the title of the play itself: The Zoo Story,… is the play 's story of how modern urban life transpires in a landscape where human animals are looked into unnatural enclosure" (68) such as " Peter 's scale flat, with wife, children, two televisions, and potentially antagonistic pets" (69). It also shows how Jerry suffers from " divided space" (Krauss 69) in a dirty and shabby like room. Rose A. Zimbardo says that the title suggests that " the world is a zoo" (145) where animals are secluded and isolated from each other by "bars" (164) and people by their classes and education. She emphasizes the idea that man is isolated from his "animal nature" (142) and from other people. One believes that the title has been made to tease the reader and frustrate him because The Zoo Story is a story that we never heard about. Edward Albee wrote The Zoo Story (1959) when he was at the age of thirty and in