Knife

When your play mentions Sigmund Freud right at the beginning (17), you can probably expect a phallic symbol to appear somewhere along the way. You've got to wait a while for it, but the phallic does show up at the end. That's right ladies and gentlemen: the knife that Peter wields and Jerry falls upon can be seen as a symbol of a penis.

Peter is goaded into grabbing the knife when Jerry makes fun of his manhood: "You couldn't even get your wife with a male child" (267). And when Peter uses the knife, Jerry tells him he's regained his masculine verve and oomph: "And Peter, I'll tell you something now; you're not really a vegetable; it's all right, you're an animal. You're an animal, too" (278).

The use of the knife isn't just about potency, though. It's also about sex. Jerry tells Peter he's a homosexual (124), and his nattering at Peter, and tickling Peter, can be seen as a kind of courtship. In some ways, the last scene makes more sense as sex than as murder. Jerry is, after all, happy after he's stabbed, and feels that he's connected with Peter in a new and wonderful way. Peter is horrified and panic-stricken. But he might well be panic-stricken after sex too, since he's married and thinks of himself as heterosexual. If the knife is a phallic symbol, The Zoo Story can be read as a love story—though not one with a happy ending.