Giles Goat-Boy, Barth's greatest commercial success, is a novel concerned with the question of innocence and its loss. This narrative retains vestiges of the existential influence in Barth's earlier works. His major concern, however, is with the ultimately despairing implications of the "Tragic View," particularly the notion that all advances or achievements on the individual level are in time eroded and forgotten in the broader societal realm. In addition, Barth is concerned with the limits of education and the possibilities of knowledge, again for both individuals and social organizations.