Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Blank, Contempt
The tone of The Zoo Story is blank. Weird stuff happens, odd things transpire, unusual words are spoken, and the play just goes on, without really telling you how you're supposed to feel about it or what you're supposed to think. "I DON'T UNDERSTAND!" Peter shouts (171), and that seems to more or less be the reaction throughout. "What were you trying to do? Make sense out of things? Bring order?" Jerry taunts Peter (108), but he seems to be taunting the audience, too. There isn't any sense or any order. Things just happen, and there isn't a particular way to judge them or arrange them.
The blankness, though, at times also seems to slide into contempt—for Jerry, for Peter, for the audience, and for the author himself. Trying to figure out things is ridiculous and pitiful. "You don't know quite what to make of me, eh?" (179), Jerry asks, and it's a question with an edge.
At the end, when Jerry tells Peter "You've lost your bench" (278), it seems like Albee would like his play to do that to you, too. He wants you cut adrift because he finds your certainty (and Peter's certainty… and Jerry's certainty, too) to be ridiculous and absurd. "That's disgusting…that's horrible" (143), Peter says of Jerry's landlady—but it seems like it's also meant to apply to the play as a whole, and to all the people who think the play is disgusting and horrible. Albee is not a kind playwright. The world can be a cruel, cruel place.