John is left to himself in a strange château, with a strange new identity and even stranger new family. I could not ask for forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault. Immediately beside me was a gargoyle's head, ears flattened, slits for eyes, the jutting lips forming a spout for rain. The leaded guttering was choked with leaves, and when rain came the whole would turn to mud and pour from the gargoyle's mouth in a turbid stream... seeping down the walls, swirling in the runways, choking and gurgling above the gargoyle head, driving sideways like arrows to the windows, stinging the panes... there would be no other sound for hour after hour... but the falling rain, and the flood of leaves and rubble through the gargoyle's mouth." In their brief encounter, it was clear that Jean was a more ruthless, less pleasant man that John. As he stays there, it becomes increasingly obvious how this had affected things – and how Jean has set John up to be the scapegoat of the title. John is no saint himself – though motivated by much purer morals than his doppelgänger, he is weak and often foolish. And blindingly naive at times. For all that, he is very sympathetic, and du Maurier does a great job of making us feel his frustrations, fear, and dawning attempts to make the best of it.

Years of study, years of training, the fluency with which I spoke their language, taught their history, described their culture, had never brought me closer to the people themselves.” It is an old-fashioned, psychologically excavated classic in its almost fantastic organization. I do not reveal the end in other novels or short stories by Daphne du Maurier because there is a final twist. Just as an actor paints old lines upon a young face, or hides behind the part he must create, so the old anxious self that I knew too well could be submerged and forgotten, and the new self would be someone without a care, without responsibility, calling himself Jean de Gué... " The novel was first adapted into film in 1959 by director Robert Hamer, with Alec Guinness playing the parts of John Barratt and Jacques de Gué. filled with an intense desire to get away from that dingy, shabby hotel and never set eyes on it again, and as my anger rose and self-disgust took possession of me..."

More about The Scapegoat

I dragged myself to my feet, and with my hell-hound in tow started off once more through the vastness of the wood, feeling, as the poet did before me, that my companion would be with me through the nights and through the days, and down the arches of the years, and I should never be rid of him."

Indeed there are at least two other contenders for the description of "scapegoat". Either the daughter or the wife could be seen in these terms. Marie-Noel seems over-eager to sacrifice herself for her father, as does Françoise, the Count's wife. The intensity of the little girl Marie-Noel's relationship with her father is clearly a reflection of that between the author, Daphne du Maurier, and her own father, the charismatic actor-manager Gerald du Maurier. John goes completely unprepared into Jean’s life. Jean has a chateau, a glassworks, a wife, a mistress, a lover, a brother, a mother, a daughter and a sister who hasn’t spoken to him for fifteen years. The whole context is strange to John, who has to find ways of dealing with all of these things—and Jean’s life really does feel as complex as real life, and the tightrope John walks through it keeps you holding your breath as you read. I have read several of Daphne Du Maurier's books and loved every single one. Rebecca is my favorite but this book came very close to it.The narrator, and viewpoint character, is an Englishman named John. At the start of the novel we learnt that John is dissatisfied with his life as a university lecturer, and tending to become depressed with what he sees as a futile life. It is evident that he is travelling through France, where he meets a man who eerily is his double in looks; a confident French count, Jean de Gué. Intrigued despite himself, John plays along with the Count's wishes, indulging in a night of drinking, and staying in an anonymous downbeat hotel overnight. On waking, he discovers that the man has disappeared, taking all John's own clothes and belongings, and leaving him to play the role of the "Comte Jean de Gué". Thus we have the novel's basic premise. What would you do if you came face to face with yourself? That's what happens to John, an Englishman on holiday in France, when he meets his exact double - a Frenchman called Jean de Gue. John agrees to go for a drink with Jean but falls into a drunken stupor and wakes up in a hotel room to find that Jean has disappeared, taking John's clothes and identity documents with him!

The conceit of the story is that two men, unrelated to each other, meet by accident in a pub, they both notice that the other looks exactly like himself. Just as if they were identical twins.The Scapegoat is a 1957 novel by Daphne du Maurier. In a bar in France, a lonely English academic on holiday meets his double, a French aristocrat who gets him drunk, swaps identities and disappears, leaving the Englishman to sort out the Frenchman's extensive financial and family problems. Due to his depression - he walked the streets at night in the rain and knew he must get drunk. He also was thinking of spending a few days at a monastery in hopes of finding the courage to go on living before returning to England. Have you ever wanted to run away from your life? What would happen if you suddenly had the chance to; would you "grasp the nettle"? Or what if a new life was imposed on you, whether you liked it or not? Such is the premise of Daphne du Maurier's 1957 novel, The Scapegoat.