5 questions

Help me study for my English class. I’m stuck and don’t understand.

Watch the video on YouTube Albee’s The Zoo Story . I recommend you re-read the script to answer these questions as the play is layered and it will likely be tough to unravel it after a single reading. Remember to answer thoroughly and reference the play to support your responses.

** Note: It’s likely that you can find the answers to some if not all of my questions online without having even read the play. This would be a disservice to yourself, your decision to invest your time and money into your college education and a missed opportunity to learn and discover something about yourself.

The Zoo Story Questions:

1. Jerry gives Peter a list of his few possessions. What do you think these specific items represent?

2. Explain Jerry’s comment about the mirror being too hard and one of the last steps.

3. Find and cite at least one example of irony in the play.

4. Jerry tells Peter that, after he poisons the dog, he has “gained solitary free passage, if that much further loss can be said to be gain.” What does he mean by this? What greater (“further”) loss has Jerry suffered?

5. Peter stays put during Jerry’s long story about the dog, he stays during Jerry’s ranting and he even stays when Jerry physically accosts him. Why doesn’t he just leave? As Jerry says, nobody is holding him there.