21st July 2009 Peristiwa di Zoo (First visit)

Today’s reading material is “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee, an expert in the Theatre of the Absurd. (Now you know why people who adapted and made this into the Malay version came up with such an eccentric title!) Seriously this piece of work is real hard to understand, and Jerry’s never-seem-to-end utterances do not help much either! It was until the final two pages that the whole play starts to make sense! From this play I can see the ultimate desperation to die; why some people in reality seem so eager to end their lives so quickly! The feeling of not being accepted by the society, the damnation of prejudice, and the evil doings of marginalizing individuals who differ from the norm is the cause of Jerry’s death. If only people around him try to understand him, if only society accepts him for who he is, if only he was given a chance, all these ‘if onlys’ could have saved Jerry from the dagger he longed so much to pierce into his body. The audience/readers were left helpless when Jerry ‘dies’ on stage, but we could save lives if we spare some time to care for the people around us. (Oh, and I really want to know what happened to the black dog in the missing page!)