Aggression And Rebellion:A Spatial Analysis Of At Home At The Zoo By Edward Albee

Edward Albee(1928-2016)is the most famous and influential contemporary playwright in America after Eugene O’Neill,Tennessee Williams,and Arthur Miller.His debut work The Zoo Story(1959)has opened up his literary career and enjoyed great popularity.After a lapse of 46 years,Albee chose to expand the initial play with an extra act Homelife to make it a two-act play At Home at the Zoo.However,it did not receive the expected attention even though the adapted version made Peter’s struggle more reasonable.On the whole,the new act redefines the audience’s understanding of the characters and reshapes their view of the play.This thesis aims at analyzing the characters’ state of existence in the urban setting by using Lefebvre’s space theory and other related space theories as its theoretical framework.Firstly,due to the different gender spaces which men and women belong to,women perform their desire of leaving especially when they are confined within the private space(marriage and family).Secondly,two strangers,Peter and Jerry(the haves and the have-nots),encounter at Central Park(urban public space)and fierce conflicts break out,which end up with the death of Jerry.It is the disparity between different spaces that contributes to the tense relationships(aggression and rebellion)among these people.In order to challenge/maintain their/other’s status quo,characters who are under the double “squeeze” of physical space and social space in this play make aggression and rebellion towards each other.The conflicts between private and public spaces and the unfairness of space production also bring about people’s identity dislocation.By unfolding the conflicts and resistances of the characters from the perspective of space,it tries to figure out the reason of their conflicts and answer whether the struggles of the characters under such circumstances can improve their state of existence.In this way,this thesis attempts to interpret the playwright’s political parable of society.