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Epiphany In The Zoo Story

Decent Essays

In The Zoo Story by Edward Albee, Jerry is able to confront his own forms of darkness in order to achieve a full outlook in life. Jerry is able to accept loss and cruelty in life in order to become a full member and participant in society. He reaches this epiphany through his relationship with his neighbor’s dog. When Jerry enters his home building, he is constantly interrupted but the dog and his growling. His daily routine consists of worrying about this dog, and not being able to complete his own duties. So Jerry decides to lay out burger meat for the dog in hopes to form a relationship. However, when that fails, he plans to poison the dog. Though the murder was unsuccessful Jerry used this as an opportunity to learn many valuable life …show more content…

Without cruelty, kindness would be meaningless, and without loss, gain would be negligible. Jerry sees that the balance of the two allow him to live in acceptance of himself and others. By facing these rules of society instead of ignoring them, he can become a complete human. Instead of inhabiting with other animals and humans, he can now coexist with them. He can get along with them, and form a relationship. He sees that people on this earth are merely segregated animals coexisting in separate bubbles, and the only way one can get along is to accept cruelty and loss as well as the respecting the other bubbles.
In “Lord of the Flies”, the antagonist Jack not only confronts his darkness, but his darkness confronts him. Jack and other young boys are stranded on a desert island and are forced to assimilate into new circumstances. However, in contradiction to Jack, other parallel characters such as Ralph, are able to live amongst these new struggles instead of becoming them. Jack exemplifies how recognizing the darkness can destroy one 's spirit and compel them into evil instead of enlightening them on acceptance. Throughout the relationship between jack and ralph, we can see the deterioration of Jack 's humanity in contrast to Ralph. Initially on the island, Jack and Ralph share a mutual respect in addition to a distribution of leadership on the

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