阿尔比的动物人间 (下)：孤独带不来自由，你我都是被隔离的笼中人
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Let's review the definition of absurdity. The absurdity comes from France in the 1950s. It shows the absurdity of the world and human existence. Its philosophical basis is existentialism. The basic theme of existentialism is that the world is absurd, life is painful. Specifically, you can read Sartre's "Existentialism is a kind of humanitarianism". I read it in college and did a lot of notes, but now I forget it.

As a famous playwright, Edward R. R. B. has always been devoted to the creation of absurdity. His starting point is the story of the zoo. The plot of the play is very simple. There are only two characters in the whole play, Peter and Jerry.

The story takes place on a Sunday afternoon. Peter is reading a book on a normal long stool in Central Park. At this time, a homeless man and Jerry take the initiative to go to dinner. First, he told him that he had been to the zoo, then asked him about the way, and also asked Peter about his marriage, children, and other family matters. Jerry tried to decide, but Peter was always very indifferent. But Jerry, regardless of whether the other party was willing to listen, still talked about his experience without hesitation, and made Peter have to make a reaction.

When the conversation was nearing the end, Jerry deliberately collided with Peter, to drive him away from the long stool, in order to make him angry and talk to himself. And after all this attempt failed, Jerry pulled out his dagger to fight with Peter. In the case that the latter was unwilling, he deliberately put the dagger in Peter's hand, and himself went up and pounced on the dagger, and fell in Peter's arms and committed suicide.

The "A Sound of a Piano" version is not noticed in the previous years. And this time, the first thing that caught my attention was the "Story of the Zoo" which has a strong class consciousness. Only two characters, Peter and Jerry, their lives are very close. First, let's take a look at Peter. This is how Arby describes him.

Peter is 40 years old, medium-sized, looks ordinary, wears a flower dress, and wears a pair of foot-worn glasses. Although he is middle-aged, his dress makes people feel younger than actual age. In his conversation with Jerry, we can learn that Peter has a decent job. The person in charge of the publishing company earns $18,000 a year.

He has a good family, wife and two daughters. And usually when he has time in the afternoon, he likes to come to this park, sit on the long chair and watch the Times. Wow, this detail is so cool. Times is really the same class of fashion items in the United States.

Peter, as described by Arby, is a very standard middle-class American man. When he is interested in Jerry, asking where the other is, in the subconscious, he wants to use this to judge what kind of class the other is in, the sentence in the dialogue can prove this very well. When Jerry once again said that he went to the zoo, "Do you know what I did before I went to the zoo? I walked along the Washington Square,

Peter was very sharp, and from this sentence he came up with the key word: "Washington Square, the fifth big knife." Then he thought about his thought of a sharp place to live. He was greatly inspired to say: "Oh, so you live in a village?" This village refers to a place in the western part of New York City, Greenwich Village. There are all kinds of artists and idealists living here, even public figures. Greenwich Village represents another way of life, which can be said to be anti-American to some extent.

In other words, in Peter's heart, because of this one sentence, he gave Jerry two labels. First of all, Jerry, who is talking nonsense to himself here, is too similar to the gang of people who live in the village of Greenwich in the public eye. Second, he who lives in this place must be in a bad relationship with the poor.

But in reality, Jerry is just a building on the top floor of a four-story building in the northwestern part of New York. In his view, the room is small and ridiculous, and the same small and ridiculous room is separated by a very thin wooden board. His so-called "family property" is all about some basic necessities of life. The only emotional support is the rock and stone he found when he was young and a few old love letters.

In this park in the afternoon, the two people who had a very strange conversation may not have any deep interaction in any time frame. Because their life in the countryside is destined to be like this. So can these two people really have a good communication? It is easy to find in daily life that everyone has different desires for relationship and communication. They are in different places in the hearts of different individuals.

In the story of the zoo, Peter lives a middle-class life with a good income and a harmonious family. He is the most successful modern man we can imagine.

But sometimes, safety also means losing something. The sense of security in his life gave him a cage that was different from the one outside. He was willing to stay alone, and carefully set himself up. Just like he told Jerry with satisfaction. I sat on this chair almost every Sunday afternoon. It was so close, no one else sat on it. So I stood alone. He had no interest in the outside world, no desire to communicate with others.

In the face of Jerry's initiative to judge, Peter was very concerned, and could not make a passionate memory at all, and even wanted to make up for it. In the prompt that Ed and Arby gave to the car, there are words such as "I'm anxious to continue reading", "I feel uncomfortable", "I'm anxious to get rid of it". It is clear that Peter was very satisfied with the world he lived in, and did not want to be disturbed by outsiders at all.

To him, Jerry is a outsider who destroys his peaceful life and forms a kind of threat. Peter only cares about his own life, and doesn't even want to try to understand the situation of others. Although from now on, Peter's behavior and psychology are easy for us to understand, but Arby's description and the criticism of the movie made me think of the famous designer Samuel Yoss.

We can't see ourselves. We need to hit something else to reflect on ourselves. Although modern society gives us the greatest possibility of a rational life, it doesn't mean we don't need to interact with society. To put it bluntly, self is a very virtual thing. If we don't interact with others, our self will become more and more blurred. We will gradually lose the most real feeling, and live in the illusion of perfection.

Compared to Peter, Jerry's life was not so easy. Through his short-lived words, we were able to move his family tragedy. His mother and many men were in contact with each other. When Jerry was 10 years old, he ran away with his old lover. A year later, he was abandoned by his lover and died in the abyss. The body was carried back by his father. Not long after, Jerry's father was also killed in a car accident. Since then, he has been living with his aunt. But on the day of high school graduation, the aunt who was all gloomy all day suddenly died.

In this way, the death of his mother and father made him an orphan, and the death of his mother made him lose his home. The unfortunate family life caused him to have no love. He became a hunter for a short time, and this experience almost destroyed his ability to love others. In his opinion, there is only sex and no love between women, and it can only last for more than an hour.

In addition, Jerry also did not feel any warmth in the place where he lived. In this apartment where he lived, the room was very crowded, as if it was in a straight line, but in fact it was a dead end. Jerry's description of his neighbors is very standard. There are women who are married with closed doors, gay lovers who love to wear kimono and go to the bathroom, and a family of left-out people. There is no even the most basic contact, and the profound exchange and understanding is more indescribable.

正如他自己所说,另外那间住着一个人,我不知道是谁,我从来没见过,从来没有,至今一直没有见过。 如果放到更大的背景下,纽约,这座有着 800 万人口的城市,从表面上看那么繁华喧闹,可实际上人与人之间却越来越难以接近。

In contrast, we can find that Jerry's need for communication and relationships is much greater than Peter's. But because of the difference between the two, Jerry's ideal deep communication is destined to fail. On the surface, this is all because of Peter's unwillingness. But the fundamental reason is that people are seduced and twisted by modern life, which leads to the separation and coldness of individuals.

When Peter and Jerry asked each other about their situation and self-introduction, they didn't say what kind of person they were, but they pointed out their nature. What they said was what they defined as something that they had. Peter was paid $18,000 a year. A wife, two daughters, two TVs, one of which was for the children. It's a pity that they don't have a son now.

while the "Jerui" is a few of our few assets. A few clothes, a power supply, a pen, a knife, two fork, a big and a small, two spoons, two air-shaped frames, eight or nine books, a colored poker card, etc. It's like in this huge, deformed world, we no longer care about our souls and nature, and matter becomes the final host.

Here, the story of the zoo that Jerry didn't even mention until his death is also unknown. In this play, the zoo and the human world we live in clearly have countless individuals, but are forced to separate, not understanding each other and decoding the world. The most natural relationship between people does not exist. Although there are people who try to save like Jerry, the end is death. It seems that only in this way can Peter have a little sympathy for himself, and let Peter have a chance to wake up from the numbness.

Well, thank you, Peter. I mean it, not thank you very much. Oh my God. Peter, get your book here beside me on the bench, Peter, quick. Quick, get your book. Peter! Good, now hurry away. Hurry away, Peter. The cats are getting dinner, and your parakeets are setting the table. Oh my God.

Oh my god! Oh my god! My god, I...