| Abstract: | Throughout history, mankind has always depended on the "scapegoat". In surveying the mythology of the past, Sir James George Frazer identifies and traces numerous instances of the paradigm. Moreover, Western thought and culture are defined primarily by a scapegoat. The Christ of the New Testament has been the central figure in our history for nearly two thousand years. Even the dating system we use bears witness to this fact: B.C. stands for "before Christ" and A.D. for anno domini, "in the year of our Lord." Belief in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrificial death as a scapegoat remains vital today, though much of the "learned" world would outspokenly deny His very historical existence, to the extreme of revising our calendar. C.E., "common era," has been suggested as a replacement for A.D., thus obscuring Christ's birth as the watershed event in world history. Still, the centrality of Christ to Western culture and thought is often recognized, even by those who deny the redemptive power of the cross. Over the ages, many of the greatest artists who have recorded and shaped the world around them have appropriated the, cross in one form or another. Even in a twentieth-century world characterized by apathy and skepticism, the Christ of the cross has exercised power over the creative imaginations of various writers. This paper will explore the use of the Christie scapegoat paradigm in three well-known works of the twentieth-century. After briefly summarizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century research into the scapegoat motif, we will address William Faulkner's Light In August, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. |
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