Drama Task (The Zoo Story)

Drama ( The Zoo Story)
Name : Ratna Adi Tejaningrum
NIM : A 320 080 148
Class : G

1. The Characters
a. Peter
Peter is in early forty, married, a middle-class publishing executive, embarrassed, childish, serious person. he has two daughters, two cats and two parakeets, and he lives in ignorance of the world outside his settled life.
b. Jerry
Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man who lives in a boarding house and is very troubled. He is in his late 30s, carelessly dressed, once muscular and handsome. He is weary.

2. Plot
Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets who lives in ignorance of the world outside his settled life. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man who lives in a boarding house and is very troubled. These men meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Jerry is desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories from his life, including "THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG", and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. The action is linear, unfolding in front of the audience in “real time”. The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level.
The catalyst for the shocking ending transpires when Peter announces, "I really must be going home;..." Jerry, in response, begins to tickle Peter. Peter giggles, laughs and agrees to listen to Jerry finish telling "what happened at the zoo." At the same time Jerry begins pushing Peter off the bench. Peter decides to fight for his territory on the bench and becomes angry. Unexpectedly, Jerry pulls a knife on Peter, and then drops it as initiative for Peter to grab. When Peter holds the knife defensively, Jerry charges him and impales himself on the knife. Bleeding on the park bench, Jerry finishes his zoo story by bringing it into the immediate present, "Could I have planned all this. No... no, I couldn't have. But I think I did." Horrified, Peter runs away from Jerry whose dying words, "Oh...my...God", are a combination of scornful mimicry and supplication.

3. Setting
a. Setting of time: on a sunny afternoon.
b. Setting of place: Mostly, setting of place happened in New York's Central Park Zoo.

4. Style
- Grammatical structure is informal both in narration and dialogue the point of his style and using the easy word. So it is easy to get understanding.
- Sentence construction; long and short sentence. The author usually used language sentence construction in narration, when he describes some detailed information.
- Diction: the choice of words are easy to understand. Mostly used as dialogues form.

5. Theme
The theme used within this story is isolation.

6. Conclusion
The kind of drama can be related to “man versus society”. This reason is because the story told about human and society especially in conflict that happened between Peter and Jerry.