What is this story about

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This is the human zoo. Peter and Jerry are more than characters with sets of personality traits. Peter is not just a tweedy professorial type. He is the type of erudite scholar who values reason and reaps the rewards of a bourgeoise life and of economic status. This is not a bad thing but it is typical, safe and unimaginative. Society values the rational and ordered mind which are rewarded with the trappings of the American Dream, in Peter's case - two daughters, a menagerie pets, a wife, social standing, and a well-paid job. For Albee, this is a life that lacks the artist's sense of chance, danger, and adventure. They are also the dangers inherent in gay life in 1959 when the play was written.

Jerry, too, is more than a collection of characteristics. While homosexuality (and the 'gay pick-up') may be hinted at, Jerry and does not represent nor speak exclusively for gay culture. He embodies an artist's mania. His life for whatever reason - and family conflicts are mentioned outright - has led to this gift for storytelling, or writing as it were. His imagination borders on a kind of madness. Jerry perceives deeply, feels passionately, and observes life in all its squalid detail with an artist's eye. For this, he is not rewarded, but marginalized. Albee takes this idea to an extreme. Not being useful, Jerry must be sacrificed. Welcome to America.