Word: goats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...maybe illuminate, both Judaism and Christianity, as well as the central tenet of 20th century humanism-that all life can be accounted for in terms of reason. In this prodigious, labyrinthine fiction, the reader is constantly baffled and bamboozled by trap doors and intellectual booby traps. Reading Giles Goat-Boy, and debating its meaning, will surely be one of the most bracing literary exercises of 1966 and beyond. It is a satire of major import...
Along comes a Messiah from the School of Animal Husbandry-a half-beast, half-boy called George Goat-Boy. The looping plot of Barth's intricate fable centers on George's struggle to be accepted as the new Grand Tutor...
...Answer Is Power. As with the Biblical Jesus, who is descended from both the Divine and the House of David, Goat-Boy is given both mystical origin through WESCAC and natural origin from a breed of Toggenburger goats on the campus animal farm. His mother, Virginia R. Hector, the chancellor's chaste daughter who works in the WESCAC programming room, falls into a trance before the machine and somehow is delivered of the goat-child. He is marked by a pair of horns. The goatherd, a disgraced Moishian (Jewish) professor, is cleared of suspicion...
...pilgrimage through the metamorphic landscape, Goat-Boy re-enacts some of the known episodes of the life of Christ. He confounds philosophers, has disciples and enemies, is tempted by power and false worship. At one stage, he denies (or asserts) himself: "I'm no Enoch Enoch [God]. I've got as much Billygoat as Graduate [Christ]. And as much as the Dean o' Flunks [the devil] or anyone else." While Barth seems to be crudely baiting religion, he is actually enunciating his concern with the theological conception of the hypostatic nature of Christ-that Christ was both...
...Finally, Goat-Boy is arrested and turned over to a lynch mob. His last message is, "To Pass All, Fail All"-A twist on the Biblical text, "He who loses his life shall preserve it." On the gallows, rope around his neck, Goat-Boy gets a reprieve. Then he disappears. He is 33-Christ's age at death...