Abstract：As the first absurd play of the world-renowned American dramatist Edward Albee, The Zoo Story is full of research significance and value. This paper has taken Camus’s Absurd Philosophy as the theoretical basis to analyze the absurdity of two protagonists Jerry and Peter, and how Edward Albee creates the absurd world in The Zoo Story. The “death of Jerry” has also been interpreted from two different perspectives—a negative escape or a positive revolt: after going through countless failures, Jerry chooses to give up his life desperately; or it can be that Jerry is reluctant to accept the absurd and indifferent world, and realizes a real talk with Peter through his death.

Key words: Edward Albee; Albert Camus; escape; revolt; Absurd Philosophy; The Zoo Story

逃避还是反抗——加缪荒诞哲学视角下《动物园的故事》解读

摘要：作为美国著名戏剧家爱德华·阿尔比创作的第一部荒诞戏剧，《动物园的故事》充满了研究意义和价值。本文以加缪的荒诞哲学作为理论基础，分析了主人公杰瑞和彼得的荒诞性，以及爱德华·阿尔比是如何在《动物园的故事》中构筑了一个荒诞世界。《动物园的故事》中的“杰瑞之死”也可以从两种不同的角度进行解读——消极的逃避或积极的反抗：在经历无数次的失败后，杰瑞绝望地选择放弃自己的生命；或杰瑞不愿意接受荒诞冷漠的世界，并通过死亡实现了与彼得的真正交流。

关键词：爱德华·阿尔比；阿尔贝·加缪；逃避；反抗；荒诞哲学；《动物园的故事》

Contents

ABSTRACT 1

KEY WORDS 1

摘要 1

关键词 1

1.  INTRODUCTION 1

1.1  EDWARD ALBEE AND THE ZOO STORY 1

1.2  PREVIOUS STUDIES OF THE ZOO STORY 2

1.2.1 Materialism and alienation 2

1.2.2 Failure of communication and loneliness 3

1.3  THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD 4

1.3.1 Social background of the Theatre of the Absurd 4

1.3.2 Main features of the Theatre of the Absurd 4

2.  ALBERT CAMUS’S ABSURD PHILOSOPHY 5

2.1  ABSURDITY 5

2.2  REVOLTING AGAINST ABSURDITY 6

2.2.1 Accepting absurdity 7

2.2.2 Refusing to accept absurdity 7

3.  ABSURDITY OF THE ZOO STORY 8

4.  ANALYSIS ON THE DEATH OF JERRY 8

4.1  A NEGATIVE ESCAPE 9

4.2  A POSITIVE REVOLT 11

5.  CONCLUSION 14

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 15

BIBLIOGRAPHY 16

Escape or Revolt: The Zoo Story Interpreted from the Perspective of Camus’s Absurd Philosophy

1. Introduction

1.1 Edward Albee and The Zoo Story

Edward Albee (1928 – 2016) emerging in the history of the American theatre in the 1950s is an outstanding American playwright. He takes his place alongside Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller as one of American foremost dramatists. He is famous for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and A Delicate Balance (1966). Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.　蒋文娟 (2010)　points out that “His 25 plays form a body of work that is recognized as unique, uncompromising, controversial, elliptical, and provocative which detail the agonies and disillusionment of that decade and the transition from the placid Eisenhower years to the turbulent 1960s.” Letts (2016) comments that “He stirred European avant-garde into American naturalism, subverted classical roles of protagonist and antagonist, broke with conventional story structure, challenged longheld and deeply felt social mores, even tinkered at the level of the sentence and created deceptively convoluted syntax.”