The Animal Other: Revisiting Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story’s Jerry and Peter from a Postcolonial Lens

Abstract

This paper delves into the intricate layers of Edward Albee's The Zoo Story (1958), with Jerry embodying the other and Peter representing the self. The focus is on the rich and complex postcolonial issues of hybrid identity, land, art, and otherness. The fixed identities of Jerry and Peter serve as a lens to understand the dynamics between the self and the other, where every other is shaped by the conquering culture while rejecting its ability to define it. Otherness is a complex and multifaceted concept involving discourse and the dominant group's norms and ideals. To maintain their feeling of superiority, Westerners stigmatized groups such as Others, Barbarians, Savages, and People of Color throughout the colonial era. The conflict is perpetuated through stereotyped ideals and spatial structure. The paper employs the Manichean allegory, the fragmented family metaphor, and the Native American trickster figure to delve into otherness and becoming an animal in the Third Space, Central Park, a unique blend of wilderness and modern life. The sudden appearance of the trickster Jerry in the northern part of the park, leading to a fatal fight for the bench, will expose invisible crimes rooted in animality, sexuality, and criminality discourses of identity-making. Albee's narrative will bring Editor Peter to the shaman's path through tribal storytelling and murder, a powerful tool for promoting sensation for diversity in media, forcing Peter to confront his other and self as the colonizer, colonized, and the animal via the face of the dying animal, Jerry, impossible to deface.