Critical Analysis on Zoo Story

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Introduction: Albee¶s very first play, The Zoo Story, performed in 1959, was less expressionistic than some of his other early plays, but no less political in its criticism of the American way of life. The play’s genius is the way in which it manages to curry our sympathy for the aggressive Jerry and to deflect it from the mild-mannered Peter. the zoo is, of course, America, where half live like human beings and the other half live like animals. The Zoo Story has been called µµthe most impressive debut ever made by an American dramatist¶¶ (Bigsby 2000:129). Like the Absurdist’s, he believes that man has lost his faith in everything, yet there is some hope in Albee’s, in man’s ability to face his true condition and thus his salvation. The ³Theatre of the Absurd´ is a term coined by Hungarian-born critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of his 1962 book on the subject. The term refers to a particular type of play which first became popular during the 1950s and 1960sand which presented on stage the philosophy articulated by French philosopher Albert Camus in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, in which he defines the human condition as basically meaningless. Camus argued that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd. The playwrights loosely grouped under the label of the absurd attempt to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe. Whereas traditional theatre attempts to create a photographic representation of life as we see it, the Theatre of the Absurd aims to create a ritual-like, mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams. The focal point of these dreams is often man's fundamental bewilderment and confusion, stemming
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