In realizing his responsibility for this family’s well being, John also comes to realize an inexplicable love for them. A word, a look, a smile, a frown, did something to another human being, waking response or aversion, and a web was woven which had no beginning and no end, spreading outward and inward too, merging, entangling, so that the struggle of one depended upon the struggle of the other. One should not interfere with their emotions. One had no right to play about with people’s lives.

As the week progresses, John begins to feel the weight of the responsibility that’s been laid upon him: John must figure out how to respond to the family’s needs, either as he believes Jean would, or in accord with his growing affection for them. John must bear the repercussions of Jean’s negligent treatment of the family: a weak and jealous wife, a dramatic daughter, a morphine-addicted mother, an overworked and suspicious brother, a bitter sister. In helping Jean carry out deception, John must parse a striking reality: that by existing, we influence-and even change-the lives of those around us. The book follows John over the course of a week, a week in which his actions and reactions shape the life of Jean’s family in both harmful and beneficial ways. He ends up taking on the charade that Jean has created: he enters Jean’s house as Jean de Gué, and the family accepts him as their husband, father, son, and brother. The SwitchĪt first, John tries to unveil his mistaken identity, but no one will believe him. Jean decides to get John drunk and to leave John with his life-his family, his failing glass factory, and his tangled relationships.

And to their mutual surprise, John and Jean are doppelgangers.

He stops in Le Mans for a drink.Įnter Jean de Gué, a man who not only has a family, but is actively trying to escape them and his life of responsibilities. He wants to know what he can do with what he deems to be a failed life, and hopes the monks will have some answers. He’s been living a quiet, lonely life, and has decided to end his latest trip to France with a stop at a monastery. Readers meet John, a British professor of French history with no connections.

In Daphne du Maurier’s The Scapegoat, readers are taken into perhaps a more modern journey whose landscape is largely interior. I think of Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, who out of love for a married woman, lays down his life for her husband. I think of the hobbits setting forth from the Shire in The Lord of the Rings and learning that they, too, are warriors capable of standing up to great evil. When it comes to development of our spiritual and social lives, the type of journey we set out on comes in a variety of forms.

The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier