Extroversion - Introversion Traits and their Influence on the Humanistic Culture in Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story

Abstract

The social, political, and cultural scene of post-world war II America witnessed considerable changes where lack of communication, meaninglessness, solitude, class distinction, and other related issues prevailed, stripping man of his humanity. In the mid-twentieth century, dramatists including Edward Albee, among other writers, tried to revive a new vitalized social ideology to transform the current mode of human's thought whose effect exceeded the limits leading man to segregate himself from others. Albee was resentful of the cultural orientation during his time and he criticized the contemporary social standards in his attempt to sublimate human's life experiences partly as a self-healing process, and partly as his contribution to creating a new wave of humanistic culture. In The Zoo Story, he voices human suffering proving that both an introvert (Peter) and an extrovert (Jerry) are victims of the social norms and are struggling with the imposed socio-cultural regulations. However, the type of personality traits proves to be decisive in redirecting the mode of human thought and can help to bring an individual back again to socialites where communication is the core. The aim of this research is to elucidate how human nature may interact with each other and with the varying situations in life to create new perspectives on humanistic culture, or in a broader context, to create a new ideology away from the psychological death of post-world war II modern man.