The Zoo Story Rules and Order Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (line number)

Quote #1

JERRY: And the zoo is around Sixty-fifth Street; so I've been walking north.
PETER: (Anxious to get back to his reading) Yes; it would seem so.
JERRY: Good old north. (9-11)

The play starts out with Jerry figuring out what direction he's going. "Good old north." Knowing where north is can be comforting; it helps you feel like you know where you are and you know where you're going. Even if it doesn't. When's the last time you used a compass?

Quote #2

We…uh…we publish textbooks. (76)

Textbooks are full of rules and order. Peter works for a company that depends on everything being in its place and telling people where to bubble in the answers. He's a bubble-in-the-answers kind of guy.

Quote #3

What were you trying to do? Make sense out of things? Bring order? The old pigeonhole bit? (108)

Jerry is sneering at Peter for trying to put Jerry in a box. But Jerry cannot be put in a box. He breaks out of cages; he leaps across boundary lines. He is like Houdini the great escape artist, if Houdini somehow got trapped in a play about a bench.