18 pages • 36 minutes read
Naomi Shihab Nye300 Goats
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Ice
Ice is an ominous element in “300 Goats.” Nye identifies place when she has her speaker refer to “Ozona” (Line 13), a town about 200 miles west of San Antonio, Texas. At the edge of Texas hill country, it’s likely that while icy conditions are not unheard of, they are less frequent than in a more northerly climate. In this poem, ice is expansive. It covers whole fields. It is a weapon, carried and wielded by the wind. It permeates the night, “swooping down” (Line 10) to chill and stiffen everything in its path.
Ice is cold and has a numbing effect. The speaker is not cold, but a warm, feeling person who worries about how animals will fare in the harsh conditions, particularly the little ones. Political rhetoric often points toward the next generation as the hope of a nation. However, a generation who is iced over, who becomes numb or perishes in an icy climate is not likely to lead anyone anywhere.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE, came into existence in 2003 but grew to notoriety after 2016, when border issues and immigration became a central political concern. Via the multiple ways one might interpret “ice,” “300 Goats” can be read through the lens of human rights as well as through the perspective of ecopoetics.
Plurality and Singularity
The number 300 occurs with some frequency in Islamic, Greek, and Hebrew traditions. In several instances, it is the number of armed forces that win victory over a formidable enemy. Three hundred represents the number of seats in the Greek Parliament. While 300 might not be a gigantic number in the ranching business—in which herds of cattle might be counted in the thousands—the number seems significant in relation to goats. It is a number that, in this instance, feels both representative of a herd and vulnerable.
Another example of a multiple entity in “300 Goats” is the “Scholars debating Chinese zodiac” (Line 5). Unnumbered, “[s]cholars” (Line 5) feels vast. The learned people interested in arguing over the distinction between goat and sheep are neither followers nor leaders. To debate, in this case, is not to act in any way that affects anything. Whatever their numbers are, their argument hardly matters, as evidenced by the parenthetical punctuation.
Singularity in “300 Goats” appears in the first-person voice of the speaker, as well as in the solitary figure of the rancher. The poem plays with the idea of the individual and the collective. The two identified humans in the poem are single-bodied entities with individual perspectives about the goats, who are a collective entity.
The Chinese Zodiac
In the first half of the poem, the speaker is distracted by thoughts of the Chinese zodiac and whether it is “the year of the goat or the sheep” (Line 4). The Chinese word does not make a clear distinction. In either case, the zodiac uses animals to symbolize certain qualities and conditions, such as popularity, kindness, and prosperity. As the zodiac is designed for human use, the animals do not represent the potential kindness or prosperity of their own kind but that of the human population.
The Chinese zodiac follows the lunar calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar, but is likewise divided into 12 units. Rather than a constellation-based symbol for each month, as in the Western zodiac, the animal symbols in the Chinese zodiac pertain to years. The year before “300 Goats” was published was the year of the sheep (or goat). The characteristics associated with the goat, in addition to kindness, are a strong sense of justice, perseverance, and inner resilience.
The presence of the zodiac in the poem introduces the idea of forces or conditions beyond human control or, at least, already in place. The zodiac is a tool for understanding how to best navigate a world that is already in motion. It is not symbolic of a maverick or highly individualistic outlook but a way of seeing oneself as part of a greater energy.
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
