Among the Outsiders.
Studies in Scapegoat Figure Typologies
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Table of Contents
- Introduction Let’s finish quickly
- Chapter 1. Le mal ontologique: Scapegoating and Literature
- Chapter 2. A Threatening Other
- Chapter 3. Doubles and the Apogee of Desire
- Chapter 4. Anti-Heroic Maids and Prisoners
- Chapter 5. Figurae Christi: The Three J’s
- Chapter 6. A Third Way
- Epilogue Literature as Equipment for Living
- Index
Introduction
Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious power behind it.
You loaded the sins of the city on the goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed.
It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods.
Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help.
Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism …
Purgation was replaced by the purge.
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
For over half a century, few American short stories have caused such a confusing stir and so polarizing a response in college and high school English classes, as Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. Its publication in The New Yorker in 1948 induced readers to send mostly flame mail with a few voices requesting further clarification as to the exact message the author was trying to send, in a story which would cement her reputation in the gothic genre for generations to come. Later that year, Jackson responded to these missives with a somewhat philosophical tone: “Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story’s readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.”1 The consternation of her readers was further exacerbated by the disconcerting realism with which she wrote, to the degree that subscribers naïvely inquired just where such traditions of stoning took place in mid-century America. Even the television film produced by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1969 for educational purposes would have been remiss to exclude the disclaimer at the beginning, The following is fiction.
The story begins on an idyllic summer day; the flowers are blossoming under a clear sky and school is in recess for an anonymous rural village of three hundred residents. There is a bank, a post office, and a village green. Nervously, the children gather stones into a pile as the men assemble while discussing stereotypically masculine topics such as tractors and taxes, to be followed by the equally stereotyped throng of gossiping wives, gaily chatting and reprimanding the ebullient children. The setting could, potentially, be anywhere as Jackson goes on to describe a picture not atypical of the countless tight-knit, agricultural communities dotting the countryside, characterized by time-honored patriarchal structures impervious to change. Jackson emphasizes the sociological necessity of the lottery, placing it on par with other civic activities in the village such as the square dances, the Halloween program, or the teen-age club. These activities are meant foremost as an opportunity to promote social cohesion and strengthen the community bonds among its members. The annual organizer, Mr. Summers (the allusion is clear as the lottery takes place at the end of June), is aided by the nomen omen postmaster, Mr. Graves.2 Ballots are placed into a black box described as shabby and worn with age, thereby demonstrating that the tradition has roots from long ago. However, the nomenclature which Jackson uses is a contextual key, for the lottery moves from the realm of civic activity to tradition to ritual, all in that order. Yet even though the last of these implies an apparent religious connotation, “so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded,” the absence of a church or any other theological entity from the village might also suggest that the citizens simply have no need for one.3 Rituals evolve whether for practical reasons or due to the fact that memories fade. Traditions are likewise mythologized but often their origins or intended purpose have long since been forgotten. The lottery has undergone several changes: slips of paper take the place of the original woodchips, the swearing-in ceremony is now only perfunctorily conducted, no one can quite remember the tuneless chant sung before the ceremony, whereas the ritual salute has also been allowed to lapse. These changes are necessary to accommodate the ever-changing needs of the participants – the village has grown and prospered since the original settlers arrived and the rushed pace of the ceremony reflects just that. After all, dinner is at noon.
But even a diluted version of the ritual must be performed and Mr. Summers duly rattles off the names of each household according to the patronymics. Women are excluded from drawing except if the pater familias happens to be absent such as in the case of Clyde Dunbar. Attaining the age of sixteen and thus actively participating in the lottery can be viewed as a rite of passage for young men. The general feeling is convivial as Mr. Summers greets his fellow menfolk in a friendly manner as they approach the black box to draw their lot. All of this, much to the chagrin of Old Man Warner who acidly comments, “ ‘Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everyone.’ ”4 A stalwart defender of tradition, Old Man Warner has participated in the lottery seventy-seven times and wants to preserve the solemnity of the ritual.5 There is a certain irony in his assertion regarding the general laxity, “Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. […] First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery.”6 He firmly believes that the lottery represents civilized progress, despite other towns having already abandoned the tradition.
Bill Hutchinson draws the slip with the black spot and his family is selected. His wife, Tessie, begins a series of desperate protestations to which Bill curtly responds, “Shut up.”7 Respect runs deep for the lottery as everyone in the village must participate and do so with the utmost dignified courage. Even the youngest children are not spared. Everyone seems to be in a remarkable hurry for a speedy execution of the lottery, “ ‘All right, folks,’ Mr. Summers said. ‘Let’s finish quickly.’ ”8 During the second drawing among the members of the nuclear family, Tessie chooses the black spot. The final scene depicts her helplessly surrounded by friends and family, with whom she had been joking only a moment ago. In a scene that would curdle anyone’s stomach, little Davy Hutchinson is offered a few pebbles to be used in the execution. We read, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.”9 Nearly completely overtaken by the crowd led by Steve Adams, Mrs. Graves, and trailed by the shuffling Old Man Warner, the victim pitifully begs one last time for mercy. Apart from the glaring absence of an ecclesiastical presence from Jackson’s description of the community, there is one other obvious element missing from the picture – the police or any vestige of a modern justice system which would have, or so we might hope, prohibited such exercises of archaic violence. Because of that, the lottery must first be understood as both a civic activity and communal ritual, but also through Tessie’s role as an archetypal scapegoat figure. In all respects, she is innocent and even a model housewife to be admired. To interpret The Lottery as either the continuance of a fertility ritual, echoing the saying of Old Man Warner, Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon, or as the blind adherence to an age-old tradition, does neither fully nor gratifyingly explain the wanton murder of a member of the community in such a nonchalant, premeditated, and organized fashion.10 Furthermore, the active participation of the authorities of the village underscores the unanimity with which the crowd approbates, condemns, and later kills the victim using primitive methods. Everyone is in complete agreement and convinced that Tessie deserves to be killed (Fig. 1)- the murderous onslaught includes family and friends, redolent of the haunting vision of persecution awaiting the first disciples (Mark 13:12).
________
In the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, located at the heart of William Faulkner’s apocryphal county, a white woman has purportedly been attacked by a black man. A rumor circulates among the gossip-mongering townspeople. It becomes abundantly clear from the start that no one knows, as rumors go, exactly what had transpired between the two apart from the name of the guilty party. The narrator adds crucial, intervallic mentions of an intense heatwave, during which rain had not fallen for over sixty-two days. As the story progresses, the profound heat induces increased agitation leading to violent aggression, giving rise to the colloquial “hotheadedness” of several characters. A few men are gathered in a barbershop where they are discussing the assault on Miss Minnie Cooper by Will Mayes. No one can quite pinpoint who she is, apart from one barber, Hawkshaw, who staunchly denies Mayes’s potential involvement in any attack due to their familiarity. Additionally, the implausibility of such a scenario is conditioned by the fact that Minnie, as described in the barber’s own words, is “about forty, I reckon. She aint married. That’s why I don’t believe–”11 His singular, rational voice does nothing to dissuade Butch from insisting on Mayes’s guilt: “Wont you take a white woman’s word before a nigger’s?” and “Do you accuse a white woman of lying?”12 As the conversation continues, it gradually becomes obvious that the facts of the case are totally immaterial. Instead, the mere accusation, however spurious, deserves perfect credence.
The arrival of McLendon, an authority-like figure who had commanded troops in France, only reinforces the irrelevance of a burden of proof: “Happen? What the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?”13 From the purely rhetorical questions, it seems that any vengeful action would not seek to punish Mayes for what he did or did not do. Rather, their aim is one of a preventative measure that serves merely as a synecdoche for all the “black sons” that could potentially do harm. McLendon’s presence is enough to convince the other clients in the barbershop who may have had reservations regarding Mayes’s guilt. Under McLendon’s leadership, they form a choate vigilante mob operating under the pretext of protecting their wives, mothers, and sisters from a looming threat. Everyone present volunteers because McLendon together with Butch have tapped into previously held racial prejudices, catalyzed by a vague, unsubstantiated accusation made by a nearly anonymous white citizen. Could it be the heat as well?
Faulkner includes an evocative in media res dedicated to Miss Minnie Cooper, serving, it would seem, as a balanced consideration of an otherwise despicable figure. She is presented as a middle-class, single, childless, and acutely self-conscious character, despite the fact that she hails from a comfortable background. Living with her invalid mother and “sallow” aunt, Minnie reflects on the transience of her former beauty which causes her to burn with envy and desire, later turning to drink for solace as her peers went on to get married and start families.14 Minnie’s once unsuccessful tryst with a bank clerk left her “relegated into adultery by public opinion,” worse still, she no longer aroused the sexual appetites of the local men, thereby dousing her last shred of muliebrity.15 Only later does the reader surmise, during the episode at the picture show where Minnie laughs uncontrollably after the lethal assault on Mayes, that she may in fact be mentally unstable, but the impartiality of the limited narrator nowhere leaves confirmation of such a diagnosis.
The enraged posse arrives at the ice plant where the barber voices once more his futile skepticism just as a stifled whisper pulsates, “Kill him, kill the son,” after which is heard the chant “Kill him, kill the black son!” like the crowd at Pilate’s court. Will Mayes himself responds: “What is it, captains? […] I aint done nothing. ‘Fore God, Mr. John.”16 His protestations do nothing to appease the bloodthirsty vigilantes. Mayes is handcuffed and placed in McLendon’s car, but not before frantically striking the barber across the mouth who repays Mayes in kind. Unable to stomach the ensuing injustice, Hawkshaw prefers to jump out of the moving car headed towards the abandoned brick kilns outside of town. Mayes’s ultimate fate is never fully disclosed, only hinted at. As Minnie passes by the hotel, the onlookers chat amongst themselves about his whereabouts, commenting in crude, euphemistic sarcasm, “Sure. He’s all right. […] Sure. He went on a little trip.”17 In Part Five, McLendon reappears at the family home where his inquisitive wife has been waiting up for him until dark. In a fit of rage, McLendon flings her across the room before undressing and retiring for the night.
The Lottery and Dry September are united by a central and all-too conspicuous theme: an innocent victim is savagely murdered by a hellbent crowd. The victims are successful scapegoats. Akin to Tessie Hutchinson, it would be no stretch to label Will Mayes as a scapegoat, a figure so prominent in literature of the South during the century-long Jim Crow era rich in martyrologies and victimage. The parallels in both short stories are uncannily similar, even to the point of authority figures not only tolerating but actively participating in the persecution of unsuspecting victims. Modern readers cannot likely be satisfied or fooled by the explanation of an extended heatwave as the cause of Mayes’s gruesome demise or McLendon’s domestic abuse. Similarly, the survival of a sacrificial crop and harvest ritual in the prosperous American heartland seems even less credible, nonetheless grippingly resurrected by Stephen King’s cult short story in the late 1970s. The crimes are abominable and we are readily aware of that fact, equipped with a rich epistemological background of how racism, harmful ideologies, lynch mobs, genocides, and totalitarian régimes function, historically and currently. Nor does the violence depicted by either Faulkner or Jackson simply imply a haphazard and sudden release of collective aggression onto a third party. Lastly, these events, though fiction, move beyond the innocuous categorization of literary themes. The Tuskegee Institute has recorded 4,742 lynchings from 1882–1968 of both blacks and whites in the United States, while the sadistic dragging death of John Byrd Jr. at the end of the last century reignited public awareness of hate-related violence. As recent as 2011, an article appeared about the practice of Mingi among the Karo, Bana, and Hamar peoples of the Omo Valley. Twins, children born out of wedlock, or ones who qualify as impure, are cursed and likely to bring misfortune to the community. They are then ritually put to death by drowning or abandonment. These crimes are firmly grounded in a grisly historical reality that has been scripted and repeated time and time again by small groups to communities to entire nations in pursuit of reestablishing a harmonious status quo and as a means of self-preservation.
In colloquial speech, a scapegoat is a person who carries the blame for the actions of another. Its semantic origins can be traced to the Old Testament ritual chronicled in the Book of Leviticus which details the ritualized departure of a billy goat as part of the atonement ceremonies on Yom Kippur. Whereas psychosocial theories of scapegoating posit that pent-up aggression and frustration are deflected onto the innocent scapegoat victim, they do not account for the religious significance of the ritual and its power, paradoxically, to unite the community in an “all against one” dynamic, destroying in the process the presumed source of perturbation. Violent rituals (to borrow Charles Tilly's term) curtail further violence from erupting in societies precisely because the scapegoat cannot retaliate against the injustice suffered by them. In both cases, theories become heinous facts hidden behind a curtain of narrative. On the one hand, a lynch mob seeks out a marginalized member of the community, owing to his racial profile, whom they brutally murder with neither trial nor jury nor evidence. On the other hand, a pillar of village society is chosen by lot, immediately disowned by family and friends, outcast, and summarily executed. The process in each example follows an eerily similar pattern with an equally lethal outcome. All of the elements described above fit within the framework of René Girard’s anthropology of the scapegoat as set forth in Violence and the Sacred, The Scapegoat, and a host of other works published over an academic career stretching more than half a century. His incisive readings of the Western Canon, myth, and most crucially, the Scriptures, boldly conclude that scapegoating not only functions as a generative mechanism restoring social order and uniting communities, but also one that lies at the very heart of culture and religion and a phenomenon which can be found in texts of persecution testifying to the truth behind the most execrable behaviors of mankind. On a micro-scale, it is clear that the lottery ritual and Mayes’s persecution act as outlets through which to rid the community of its woes as a result of existing intrasocial rivalries through the death of arbitrarily chosen victims. They simultaneously represent the poison at the heart of and the antidote to the crisis. The police and the justice system are therefore dispensable when the law rests in the hands of the persecutory hordes who speak vox populi. Girard adds numerous other interpretive keys to the contextual puzzle in a much needed and refreshing clarion call on the nature of violence and surrogate victimage.
Details
- Pages
- 228
- Publication Year
- 2025
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631922897
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631928189
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631922880
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22450
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2025 (July)
- Keywords
- scapegoating scapegoat mechanism violence and literature mimetic theory mimetic rivalry sociology of literature literary criticism
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- Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2025. 228 pp., 8 fig.
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