Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia? Book

This is not really about a guy who fucks a goat (not that it couldn't be, but that only scratches the surface.) In a deeper sense, the goat is a metaphor for any unutterable desire or act that once revealed is met with repulsion, castigation, condemnation and expulsion. Although Albee is undoubtedly America's most vicious playwright (and the play has a quality of baiting the audience who will come to any play with Albee's name on it, regardless of how offensive it appears to be) his choice of a goat is far from random. Even beyond the etymological origin of the word "tragedy" that Albee himself references, in the deepest and most literal sense, the goat is the scapegoat, that vessel into which we pour all of our sin in the hope of redemption. This is a mirror of Martin's journey, for it is only after the awful revelation that the door to redemption opens. We need to remember that Albee is not only a notorious iconoclast, but a very sophisticated artist whose work has many layers.