Wild goats

Wild goats are part of the remote Marquesan landscape that Martin Eden pictures as an escape from the disillusionments of his life in California. They appear first as animals inhabiting the high peaks, then as quarry in his imagined future there: a small but telling link between the wilderness he longs for and the life he hopes to make from it.

Habitat and Setting

In Martin’s recollection, a broad valley in the Marquesas Islands rises from a sheltered bay to dizzy, cloud-capped peaks. Its wild abundance includes tropical fruits, wild chickens and pigs, and occasional herds of wild cattle; high among the peaks, herds of wild goats are harried by packs of wild dogs. No people live in this valley. The goats belong to a landscape presented as remote and untamed, not to a settled human world.

Martin’s Imagined Life Among the Islands

Martin imagines buying the valley and bay, establishing a headquarters there, and trading copra and pearls among the islands. His vision of a princely island life also includes hunting wild goats on the cliffs of a valley next to the valley of Taiohae. In this plan, the goats are not merely part of the scenery: they become animals he expects to pursue as he ranges through the terrain.

Narrative Significance

The goats connect two versions of Martin’s imagined refuge. The first is a specific, abundant wilderness that seems to offer independence from the world he has found illusory; the second is a projected life of travel, trade, and hunting. Later, as Martin reads accounts of his sudden literary fame, the South Seas remain his imagined destination, and hunting goats among the cliffs is among the activities through which he pictures himself elsewhere. The animal’s narrative presence is therefore grounded in the landscape and in Martin’s plans, rather than in any separate encounter between the goats and the human characters.