The Heart Wants What it Wants
In The Goat, Martin and Stevie are seen by all outside parties as having a marriage that is the very epitome of a great love affair. As Martin grows emotionally distant from Stevie, he comes to not only fall in love with a goat, but actually and honestly believe that the goat returns those profoundly tender feelings. Their son, Billy, is homosexual and at one point Martin alludes to their friend Ross as perhaps being a pedophile or at least bending toward that truly mercurial aspect of desire. Konkle may be right as The Goat seems to suggest, above all else, that the heart wants what it wants.
The Shifting Nature of Sexual Taboos
Despite the mythic aspects brought into play, there is no getting around the subject matter of The Goat: bestiality. In almost every civilization known to man—indeed, perhaps it is that rare universal truth—bestiality is the line that crosses into a taboo that cannot be accommodated. Yet the status of some "taboos" is more questionable; Billy’s homosexuality is raised as a taboo that can be crossed and, indeed, in some civilizations, fully accommodated into the mainstream. Then, of course, there is Ross’ potential flirtation with taboos which is one that shifts perhaps even more than homosexuality as the age of consent fluctuates from one culture to the next.
The (Furies) of a Woman Scorned
One of the myths which the play alludes to is that of the Eumenides and the Furies which bring about swift retribution to those who cross the line of acceptable moral behavior. In this case, the Furies are embodied in Martin’s wife, Stevie, whose final act effectively seems to put an end to Martin’s flirtation with flouting societal conventions. After all, Martin is not attracted to a goat, but to this goat; Sylvia. Sylvia’s gruesome death at the hands of the scorned Stevie would appear to bring the entire matter to a close as far as Martin’s continued flirtation with convention-flouting.
