The Zoo Story: Jerry's Side Effects Of Social Isolation

Not everyone in the world is well mannered, polite, and well civilized. Sometimes people can get positioned in situations where they are never taught these things in life. These people tend to be caught up in social isolation because they do not mix well with others. In the play called, “The Zoo Story” a man named Jerry’s side effects of social isolation shine through as he creates this odd kind of confrontation with another man, named Peter. Although it may seem that Jerry is just some schizophrenic lunatic, that is not the truth at all because his plan throughout the whole circumstance with Peter was to keep his attention long enough to teach Peter some life lessons and in the conclusion of their time together, die like his parents did.
Jerry learned some new ideas from his range of experiences with the dog. Jerry makes a comment about the landlady’s dog being like a descendant of Cerberus, a mythological dog (1159). The reason he makes that comparison is because the rooming house, is like hell and the dog is its gatekeeper (1156). While Cerberus is the gatekeeper of Hades, making sure the right people come in and nobody gets out. An idea we get from this is that the landlady’s dog, when he bites Jerry is trying to keep him out, because he does not think that Jerry belongs at the rooming house. But at first, Jerry just thinks that the dog does not like him and think he is being cruel. Jerry will not accept that and he wants to mend some sort of relationship with the dog. This gets us to the main point he brings up that he learned, and that was the teaching emotion. The teaching emotion is when you combine together, during the same occurrence, kindness and cruelty. Yet each by themselves, independent of each other, only creates individual effects not intermingled with anything else. First Jerry tried to be kind to the dog by feeding him, bring him meals every time that he entered the rooming house. Yet after the dog would devour the food, he would still try and attack Jerry (1158). Since the dog’s lack of attitude adjustment became apparent after Jerry’s act of kindness, it angered him so he decided to attempt the contrary. He had been feeding the dog hamburger meat, so one day he tainted the meat with rat poisoning (1158). After the dog survived the poisoning, Jerry realized that a relationship could be salvaged and he could have a relationship with a dog that he could never share with people. Jerry thought through his kindness he could win the dog over, and that did not happen. This made him angry, and so he decided to be cruel