The Zoo Story Society and Class Quotes

This is where you learn Peter's class status for sure. He's upper management at a small business; he's not fabulously wealthy and successful, but he's very comfortable. Also, remember Albee is a writer, so he probably knew publishers. He doesn't seem to have been very impressed with them.

Poor people are often assumed to be dangerous or violent or criminal. Jerry is reassuring Peter—but also insulting his prejudice and emphasizing his vulnerability. Jerry is as good as his word; he doesn't rob Peter. He just tries to take his bench and then falls on a knife Peter is carrying. Peter probably would have preferred just being robbed.

Peter is patronizing, but doesn't want to be patronizing. Jerry uses Peter's discomfort with class to make him even more uncomfortable. Class distinctions give Jerry some power; he can throw his poverty in Peter's face. Ultimately, though, the power involves throwing himself on a knife, which doesn't seem like such a great outcome for him.

Jerry hates his landlady. Is that because the landlady is disgusting? Or is it because he doesn't want to be like her, or to be associated with her? Jerry tweaks Peter about being upper-class, but he seems to dislike the poor people that he lives with. This is what drama critics like to call inner conflict. It's all the rage these days.

"People such as that" seems to mean "poor people." And Jerry would be one of them too, probably—the sort of person Peter probably doesn't have to interact with very frequently.

Jerry compares the landlady to her dog and suggests that both frolic in filth. But if the landlady frolics in filth and Jerry lives in her house, then we can deduce that he is frolicking in filth, too. No wonder he's cranky.

A "permanent transient" could be a homeless person, though in this case it seems to more generally mean that Jerry is poor and doesn't have a good house of his own. The reference to New York as the greatest city in the world is ironic; Jerry's poverty and cruddy boardinghouse suggests that New York has some problems.

Peter is nervous about calling attention to Jerry's poverty early in the play. But when his bench is menaced, he uses the poverty to insult Jerry, calling him a "bum." Peter also threatens to call the police, because he knows that the police are there to protect him from people like Jerry.

Jerry suggests its silly to fight over the bench when Peter has everything else. But folks don't want to lose anything even if they have quite enough. People really will fight for their benches.

Jerry has ruined the bench for Peter by killing himself near it and dying on it. Jerry's won a victory of sorts, though it seems a lot of blood to shed to win a bench.