RICHE Bouteldja
Mouloud Mammeri University Department of English, Tizi-Ouzou
The Myth of Sisyphus in the “Theatre of the Absurd”: A Study of its Thematic Implications in
Albee’s Zoo Story and LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman
Abstract
This article seeks to explore the thematic implications of the mythic method deployed by
Edward Albee and LeRoi Jones respectively in Zoo Story and Dutchman. It discusses them
with specific reference to Greek myth investigated by Camus in his Myth of Sisyphus and
Other Essays. The argument is that the phatic function related to human contact and
belonging in the two plays is sustained by the myth of Sisyphus. Through a careful analysis of
the characeters’ speech acts, we have tried to demonstrate that the central protagonists are
modern surrogates of the Greek hero in the perseverant manner with which they try to
establish communication with their fellow men.
Key words: Albee, Zoo Story, LeRoi Jones, Dutchman, myth of Sisyphus, communication
problems
Introduction
“This image would never leave me.” (Lois Gordan, 1957: XLVIII) So does Harold Pinter
reminisce about a party that he attended in London in 1957. During this party he observed
two men in a small room, one of them busy speaking while his partner was buttering his
bread. Pinter’s drama does not belie this reminiscence, as the same image is encountered
again and again, albeit in various forms, in all his plays. The centrality of this image elevated
into some sort of epiphany has a close correlation with Pinter’s interest in communication in
the modern world. Obviously enough, the two men in the small room are not connected
though the context of the party lends itself to communion. The needs run at cross-purposes,
since one of them tries to communicate with a “partner” who turns a deaf ear to what looks to
him a mind-numbing speech, preferring to divert his attention to bread buttering.
Communication is as much important for one as the issue of bread and butter for the other,
and it is easy for the reader to surmise where Pinter stands when it comes to take sides in the
human drama.
Literature review and issue
Pinter is not only dramatist to be interested in this person-to-person encounter, and the
epiphany that it inspires. Indeed, when one looks at what is generally called the “Theatre of
the Absurd” one can easily come out with illustrative examples. Edward Albee’s Zoo Story
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(1958) and LeRoi Jones’s Dutchman (1964), stage-directed by Albee for the Cherry Lane, are
indicative of the trans-national concern with communication across the divide of ethnicity and
class. Both Zoo Story and Dutchman involve two characters, Jerry and Peter in the former,
and Clay and Lula for the latter. These two plays have already received the attention of critics
such as Martin Eslin (1969), Mell Gussow(1999), Mathew C. Roudané (1987), Lisa M.
Siefker Bailey ( 2003). These critics seem to agree on the artistic value of the plays, but they
remain divided over the issue of whether or not they belong to the “Theatre of the Absurd”.
Now that the heat of the debate over the issue has cooled up, I would like to revisit these two
plays by investigating the problematic of communication as it is fleshed out through the
Sisyphus myth. One of my hypotheses is that both Albee and Jones have deployed what T.S.
Eliot calls the mythic method to express their concerns over the lack of communication in the
modern world. The Sisyphus myth is the one myth that allows the images to coalesce into that
modern epiphany Pinter speaks about in his reminiscences.
I shall argue that communication is the “rock” that the modern protagonists in Albee’s and
Jones’ s plays roll up to the top of the hill of the language problematic, which in the same
manner as in the Greek myth crumbles down for our persevering heroes to renew their effort
to roll it up again and get through to one another. In linking Zoo Story and Dutchman to the
Greek myth, I seek to connect these two plays to the philosophy of the absurd advocated by
the French existentialist author Albert Camus in his seminal book The Myth of Sisyphus and
Other Essays (1955). As already noted above, I do not wish to revive the issue of whether or
not the plays belong to the Theatre of Language, but to dig into the philosophical roots from
which the two plays flourished. To date, while some critics are ready to claim the plays for the
Theatre of the Absurd, nearly all of them accept the artistic divide that Eslin has established
between the Theatre of the Absurd and the Camusian philosophy of the absurd. It is this gap
that I wish to bridge by arguing that philosophical concepts such as the absurd can be fleshed
out in art, drama in this case, without necessarily leading to ideological drama, whether we
call that drama the Theatre of the Absurd or by some other name. I shall supplement this
philosophical and mythical approach to the two plays by appealing to Roman Jakobson’s
poetics inspired from linguistics (1987) because of the critical importance accorded to
language in the plays.
Results and discussion
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Albee’s Zoo Story and Le Roi Jones’s Dutchman are propped by the same myth, a myth that
shows itself in the character’s names and the actions that they undertake. “Peter” in Albee’s
play is etymologically derived from the Latin word “Petra” meaning “stone”. As for Jones’s
central male character, this reference to earth matter is even more explicit since he bears the
name of “Clay”. The two dramas start in a similar manner. The stage directions tells us that
Peter is a “man in his early forties, neither fat nor gaunt, neither handsome nor homely. He
wears tweeds, smokes a pipe, carries horn-rimmed glasses. Although he is moving into
middle age, his dress and his manner suggest a man younger. (p.2001)” Apart from indicating
the middle social class status that Peter enjoys, his name draws attention to the idea that this
character is etched in stone, somewhat in the manner of those sculptures dotting public parks.
Peter, it has to be observed, is said to frequent Central Park on Sundays, taking seat on one of
its benches with foliage and trees behind them in order to indulge his favourite hobby
consisting in reading books. He has frequented this bower so regularly that he has developed a
proprietary consciousness over the public bench. It is on one of these Sundays that Jerry
intrudes on Peter disturbing his peace, and eventually leading him to fight somewhat in the
manner of animals over their vital spaces. The battle over the bench climaxes with the
involuntary impaling of Jerry on the knife that he has teasingly handed to Peter in order to
challenge him to fight for the bench. Jerry’s final provocation of Peter, as I shall make it clear
later, is one of a series, all of them meant to give back life to the “rock” into which Peter is
solidified and to make him connect with his human counterparts again.
Clay the “twenty-year-old Negro” in Jones’s Dutchman and Albee’s Peter are alike, though
the antagonist in this case is a thirty-year old white woman called Lula. Just as Peter, we meet
him in another symbolic public space, the New York Subway. Like Albee’s central hero,
when we first encounter him he is sitting alone in one of the coaches, and is deeply involved
in reading a magazine looking above its “wilting pages” at the other riders getting in and out
of the train. At one of the train stops, our regular commuter catches sight of a fading image of
a white woman who is staring at him through one of the coach windows. As the train gets
ready to resume its journey, Clay forgets about her just as she was a dream image, but this
dream image soon becomes a reality as Lula intrudes on his privacy. Lula enters from the rear
of the train, “stops beside Clay’s seat and hangs languidly from the strap (1991: 77)” waiting
to be invited to take the free seat next to Clay’s. In the same as Jerry in Albee’s play, Lula
starts provoking Clay both physically and verbally in order to make him talk. The ultimate
result of the series of provocation is also similar, though we note a significant difference in
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the tragic fate of the characters. This marked contrast looks like a reversal of roles across the
two plays. In Albee’s play, it is Jerry who deliberately throws himself on the knife that he has
handed to Peter whereas in Jones’s drama it is Lula who decides to murder Clay for refusing
to conform to her own script. However, in spite of this major difference in fate, Clay and
Peter are characters provoked to action. It is the regained human agency that allows them to
drop their stone indifference to what happens around them and to communicate about human
affairs.
The problem of communication that mythic “rock” with which our two actors and playwrights
(Jerry and Peter are portrayed as such in the two plays) struggle is shown in the importance
accorded to the phatic dimension of discourse in Zoo Story and Dutchman. According to
Roman Jakobson’s speech act theory, discursive statements can fulfil six major functions
related to six major discursive components: the addresser, the addressee, the context, the
message, the contact and the code. These discursive components in the order they are
mentioned correlate with the following six discursive functions according to the prominence
given to each one of them: the emotive, the conative, the referential, the poetic, the phatic and
the metalingual functions. In detailing these functions, Jakobson speaks of the “dominant” in
the sense that genres have an established hierarchy of functions and hence are not necessarily
exclusive. The phatic dimension of communication in Jackobson’s structuralist model of
speech acts relates to “physical and psychological connections” such as the mutual presence
of interlocutors enabling human contact. In regard to this phatic function of discourse,
Jakobson writes what follows:
There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue
communication, to check whether the channel works (“Hello, do you hear
me?”), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued
attention (Are you listening?” or in Shakespearean diction “Lend me your
ears!” – and on the other end of the wire, “Umm-hum!”. This set for contact, or
in Malinowski’s terms PHATIC function may be displayed by a profuse
exchange of ritualized formulas, by entire dialogues with the mere purport of
prolonging communication. (1987: 68)
This is the kind of language that one comes across in Zoo Story and Dutchman. When
Jerry, for example, enters the scene he repeatedly calls for Peter’s dropping attention: “I’ve
been to the zoo. (Peter doesn’t notice.) I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER I HAVE BEEN
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TO THE ZOO. (p.2101)” Apparently suffering from an attention deficiency syndrome and
lost in the reading of his book, Peter takes a long time before he responds to Jerry’s
solicitation for communication: “Hm ... What? ... I’m sorry, were you talking to me?
(p.2101)” Thus launched, the play continues in the same strain with Jerry trying to tune up
Peter for conversation with anecdotes and verbal provocations in exchange of which, he
receives much humming, hahing, and many other grunts. Jerry’s quest for establishing and
prolonging human communication is opposed by Peter’s attempt to discontinue socializing in
order to slide back into his own comfortable solitariness. In his double-role of actorplaywright somewhat in the manner of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play, Jerry continues his
Sisyphean struggle for human contact while observing how at every turn of their speech Peter
takes interest in conversation only to fall back into indifference when he realizes that his high
expectation of information from Jerry is disappointed. “That’s how the cookie crumbles”,
Jerry launches to the audience before he decides to have another go at making the cookie rise
again, adding much more yeast to his conversation at every try.
Dutchman explores the same problem of human contact as Zoo Story. In spite of their
apparent gender and racial differences, Lula and Clay display similar features. Both of them
are bohemian in dress fashion and speech manners. Both of them are portrayed as actors in
their own scripted dramas, observing their respective antagonist’s reactions to their
provocations. Much more importantly, both of them look for contact with “square” human
figures. While Jerry uses class prejudice to provoke Peter Lula resorts to racial sexual
prejudice between white and black Americans. These provocations are interspersed with
anecdotes comparable to those found in Albee’s Zoo Story. The difficulty of human contact in
Dutchman is signified in the serious turn that the anecdotes and jokes take every time they are
brought up. Thus, the phatic function of the speech acts in the play is curtailed. I shall go so
far as to argue that the mythic ship “Dutchman” which the play evokes in its title refers to that
train of speech acts doomed to move with speed from one verbal station to another without
ever finding rest because of lack of human communication across racial lines.
Conclusion
It follows that the “Dutchman” metaphor in Jones’s play like the “crumbling cookie
metaphor” in Albee’s Zoo Story is anchored to the myth of Sisyphus in its evocation of the
ever-renewed effort exerted by Lula in her Sisyphean attempt to roll up that baked piece of
“Clay” up to the top of the sharply inclined hill of human communication. As a concluding
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remark, I must perhaps point out that Lula and Clay are one and the same character staging a
drama of the playwright’s estranged self groping dialectically for a way to put an end to his
own alienation by discarding the old hardened self. The same claim can be made for Albee’s
characters Peter and Jerry. From here, I affirm that the Sisyphean struggle for communication
in the two dramas is also a perpetual grappling with internal mutations of the self. As speech
acts, the two plays borrow from the Greek tradition of the Socratic dialogue such ingredients
loud thinking in the public place, provocation of another’s speech (Anakrisis), confrontation
(Sunkrisis), and the quest for the knowledge and truth of the self even at the price of death.
Notes and references
Albee Edward, The American Dream and the Zoo Story: Two Plays by Edward Albee: New
York, Plume, 1997.
Camus Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien, London:
Vintage Books, 1955.
Esslin Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969.
Gordon Lois, Pinter at 70: A Case Book, New York: Routledge, 2001.
Gusso Mel, Edward Albee: A Singular Journey, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
Jakobson Roman, “Linguistics and Poetics”, in Language in Literature, Krystyna Pomorska
and Stephen Rudy, eds., London: Routledge, 1987.
Jones LeRoi, “Dutchman”, in William J.Harris, ed. LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, New
York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991.
Mann Bruce J., ed., Edward Albee: A Casebook, New York: Routledge, 2003.
Roudané Matthew C., American Drama since 1960: A Critical History, New York: Twayne,
1996.
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