The American Dream and Zoo Story
by Edward Albee

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• 127 pages

Book Reviews of The American Dream and Zoo Story

Book Review: Mystical Animals in America
Summary: 5 Stars

There is something unique about the works of Edward Albee, a kind of mood, or wry-but-not-entirely-dry attitude, one recognizes but can't quite put his finger on. This "story" of a suburbanite with two daughters minding his own business on a park bench who is accosted by a poorer but somehow wiser man who has been at the zoo was Edward Albee's first play to be seen by the public. Dating from 1958, the one-act play, which like much of Albee's work seems to deftly mix absurdist elements with an intimate rendering of the American bourgoisie--and a sort of silent, if perhaps ironical, nod to mystical Christianity--he reminds me of a dramaturgic Saint Francis of Assisi--was first seen in Berlin. As in Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf? and The Goat, the object of desire is off stage, at least until the end, at which point "its" "retrieval" reveals a generalized dissatisfaction which the playwright allows to be dispersed as satisfaction after all, in conformity with the peculiarities of human desire and the conventions of literary endings. This two-man play seems to work largely because the older, more well-to-do man, Peter-a kind of icon of smug suburbanite self-satisfaction, who wants to be entertained, as it were, from the outside--is drawn in--across the white picket fence, or here, the green slatted Central Park bench--to the life of the slightly younger Jerry--a sort of stand--in it would seem for the playwrite, and his dramatic task to involve us all in a participatory experience this side--or perhaps a little more--of religion.

The American Dream

Although I have read/seen only four of Albee's works (Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf, Zoo Story, and The Goat), this seems to me the work of his that owes most to-or is closest to- the theater of the absurd-particularly to Samuel Beckett. And yet, as the title suggests, the work is far more American-down home, you might say-and so is the humor. The main characters are "Mommy," "Daddy" and "Grandma"-and Grandma is a scream. Her brilliant, if irascible, wit contains some brilliant, if not exactly unbiased, observations on the treatment of, expectations from, and inner reality of, the elderly. She comes off as the most intelligent person in the play, and the one we identify with the most-even if her metaphysical capacities for hiding objects, forgetting who her strumpet daughter is, and desiring with spiritual ardor the flesh of the young who may or may not be her own are not necessarily everyone's instantiation of satisfaction's successful pursuit.

Summary of The American Dream and Zoo Story

United States Books

• Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Drama
• New & Used Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > American Literature