PRIEST AS SCAPEGOAT
455
Tommy can be truly said to misbehave himself on behalf of the
other children. From the children's point of view, he is a true scape–
goat. 'The others can only afford to be "all right" because Tommy
is being a nuisance.' But the children are not the whole commun.ity.
There are always the members of the staff who say, 'We'd be all
right if it weren't for Tommy.' The wilderness into which the other
children send Tommy is the wilderness of adult disapproval, and
unfortunately the wilderness in this case has a point of view of its
own. To the child community, Tommy is a scapegoat. To the adult
community, he is a young criminal.
It is probable that there must always be a similar ambiguity in
the role of scapegoat in a highly developed and complex society. I
have already remarked on the journalistic misuse of 'scapegoat' to
mean 'those on whom one lays the blame.' The Jews for the anti–
Semite, the Germans for Lord Vansittart, the war itself for the man
in the street, the
bourgeoisie
for orthodox communists, the machine
for the Arcadians ... are all fulfilling some of the functions of a true
scapegoat, but
th~
fact is unrecognised by those who employ them.
The scapegoat's function, of which all men feel the need, has receded
into unconsciousness, and 'the cunning and selfish savage' of the
twentieth century has succumbed to the final indignity of hating the
useful saviour-beast on whom he lays the burden of his sins.
On the other hand, a class of scapegoats who formerly met with
unmitigated disapproval have in the modern world received something
like adulation from certain groups
in
society. Now here we have a
situation like that in Dr. Winnicott's hostel. The criminal of the
gangster films is 'Tommy.' Who are 'the other children'? Can it be
that they are the orphans of industrial capitalism, the working classes
and the dispossessed in general?
As
a matter of demonstrable fact,
they are. The upper and middle-classes do not read
No Orchids for
Miss Blandish.
They read Edgar Wallace or the academic thriller, in
which the police or the private detective are the heroes.
It is evident that the German professor who writes that heavy
thesis will have to be a Marxist. To-day is not the only heyday of
the property criminals. We remember Villon and other
poetes maudits.
The greatest popular hero this country ever had was a property
criminal, Robin Hood, who retired to the wilderness of Sherwood
Forest. The type of mild and amiable scapegoat hero in a more settled
age was Robinson Crusoe.
But these are impure types. The criminal scapegoat, the scape–
goat hero and another, the scapegoat-fool ... are the only consider-
