The Scapegoat: Why Your Characters Need Someone to Blame

Typically, we view a scapegoat simply as a plot device — an innocent bystander blamed for a criminal act, or the black sheep of a dysfunctional family — rather than the complex emotional barrier it can represent. When it gets personal, a scapegoat is a person, place, or event that another character identifies as the cause of their misery. They refuse to reflect on themselves so long as they are able to blame someone else.

It is human nature to resist change. In order to continue defending one’s false beliefs, they often target someone else that can serve as an excuse. Once you provide your characters with a focal point to direct their anger toward, you mask the true problem your character faces while also creating tremendous dramatic tension.

In this article, I will show you how to use a psychological scapegoat to deepen your protagonist’s internal arc. Lastly, I’ll give you a Story Weapon to brutally sacrifice that excuse and force your protagonist toward a powerful climax.

The scapegoat in fiction is the psychological shield a character uses to avoid confronting their own false belief — blaming an ex, a hometown, a rival, or a system for the pain that is actually rooted inside themselves. From Hester Prynne to Tom Robinson to Camille Preaker, the most powerful scapegoat dynamics in literature reveal that removing the blamed party doesn’t resolve the underlying wound — it exposes it, which is precisely where a story’s most transformative dramatic pressure lives.

The illusion of blame

 If you take a closer look at some of the most successful and persuasive marketing campaigns around today, you’ll find a repeated theme.

A diet advertisement may say something like, “An unusual particle that exists in your blood is keeping you from losing weight.” 

Or a skin care advertisement may claim that fine lines and wrinkles on your face are caused by an “unseen toxin in the environment.”

Marketers use this technique for a very specific reason. It gives the target audience an out from taking responsibility for their struggles.

When the problem is placed outside of ourselves (e.g., blame a chemical in the air), then we don’t feel guilty about whatever the actual issue is. The individual is not responsible for their struggle, they are simply the victim of a larger culprit.

This same psychological defense mechanism can be used in storytelling to help build depth into your characters. This defense mechanism is called “the scapegoat.”

Some of the best stories use a scapegoat as a technique to involve a true emotional shield. This is someone (or something) that your characters use to blame for their own unhappiness. They do this to avoid examining themselves.

The psychological lightning rod

Toxic dynamics are often seen in fiction using scapegoats. In a highly dysfunctional family, workplace, or friend group, there is usually a “black sheep.” This character allows other members of the family group to believe they are functional and not collapse.

By labeling one person as the source of all their problems, then the others feel free to project (and thereby deny) their own negative traits onto that character. The parents never have to sit in silence and confront their failing marriage when they can constantly yell at, and about, their rebellious and drug-addicted teenager. 

Scapegoat examples in film

Sons of Anarchy (2008-2014)

This is executed brilliantly in Sons of Anarchy in several different ways, though Juice Ortiz is perhaps the clearest example. When Juice’s mixed-race heritage comes to light, which violates the club’s bylaws, he becomes vulnerable to manipulation by law enforcement and eventually by club leadership. Rather than the club examining its own racist bylaws or the circumstances that put Juice in an impossible position, he is made into the fallguy. His spiral into self-destruction and eventual execution by the club is the direct result of being designated as the scapegoat.  

Sharp Objects (2018)

Camille Preaker returns to her hometown to cover a story about two murdered girls, and walks directly back into the role her family assigned her long ago. Her mother Adora is the center of a household built on performance, the carefully maintained appearance of a certain kind of Southern femininity and social standing. Camille, who resists that performance, represents everything that threatens the image Adora has constructed. She becomes the family’s designated problem. Without her to blame, the rot at the center of the household would have nowhere to go. Her younger sister, Amma, has learned to perform what is expected of her. Camille pays for that refusal every time she walks through the front door.

The cruelty of the scapegoat dynamic here is that Camille has internalized it. Part of the story’s power is watching her slowly understand that the family’s version of her was never really about her at all.

A mirror to the community

All of this can be scaled for entire communities as well as societies. People are naturally inclined to assign guilt to outsiders instead of dealing with the fact that they all have a role in a shared dilemma.

The scapegoat is typically a person who has been excluded from society due to his or her differences, someone who is perceived as being wired differently, or possessing some amount of power which scares the masses. 

Here is the fundamental key when you write about an archetype of a scapegoat: if they are sacrificed, no matter how much relief there may seem to be at first, the underlying problems within the community remain unaddressed. 

The people who blamed the scapegoat believe that removing them will provide some form of peace (false belief). After the scapegoat is removed, however, those who were responsible for blaming them are left in misery, having lost their opportunity to form a sense of unity or preserve justice (their need). As such, the town remains broken. When the blame is taken away from the scapegoat, it reveals the real problem at hand.

Scapegoat examples in literature

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet letter stitched onto her clothing and live on the margins of her community. The town does not become more virtuous by punishing her. It simply transfers its collective guilt onto someone it has designated as other, and in doing so, avoids examining the structures and hypocrisies that produced the situation in the first place. 

The most pointed irony of the novel is that the man equally responsible for Hester’s circumstances, Reverend Dimmesdale, is one of the most respected figures in the community. The scapegoating of Hester is not about justice. It is about the town’s need to maintain a story about itself. What Hawthorne understood, and what makes the novel endure, is that the scapegoat often emerges from the process with more integrity than the community that cast them out. Hester, over time, becomes something the town cannot quite contain or categorize, which is its own form of quiet subversion. 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Tom Robinson is not convicted because the evidence supports it. He is convicted because the town of Maycomb needs him to be guilty. His innocence is almost beside the point. 

What is on trial is not Tom Robinson but the racial hierarchy that the town has organized its entire social order around. To acknowledge Tom’s innocence would be to acknowledge something about the town itself that it is not willing to face. He is therefore made to carry the weight of that unwillingness, and he pays for it with his life. What makes this example so devastating in Lee’s hands is that everyone in the courtroom knows the truth. The scapegoating is not a failure of perception. It is a deliberate collective choice, made in full awareness, which is a far darker thing. 

The protagonist’s perfect excuse

We now get to the heart of where your protagonist’s inner journey begins and their main dilemma lies.

People generally do not want to undergo change, because change can be painful. As soon as there is a rift in their worldview, they will immediately come up with an excuse to explain away discrepancies. The immediate response might indeed be to find a scapegoat to defend their false beliefs about how the world operates.

For example, if your protagonist believes that they are unlovable, they will unconsciously sabotage their relationships. Instead of admitting their fear of being intimate, however, they will claim that their previous partners were just too demanding, or crazy, or that they simply did not understand. The ex becomes their psychological scapegoat.

So long as your protagonist can lay blame on another person or thing; they never have to confront the fearsome chasm between the way things are and their actual need for connection. The scapegoat allows your protagonist to stay safely stagnant while allowing themselves to continue to treat their own deep emotional wound as though it was merely bad luck.

Troubleshooting the scapegoat technique

Does the scapegoat have to be a person?

No. A character could easily use a location, a system, etc., as a scapegoat. Consider the main character that constantly states, “I am held back by this dead end town.” In this case, the town itself is the scapegoat. Once they move to a larger city, they realize they are equally unhappy and ultimately find out they’ve had problems with themselves all along.

Does the scapegoat know they are being blamed?

It depends on how the dynamic plays out. 

If they’re accused of being a witch, and threatened with being cast out or killed, they are well aware of it. In a typical family drama, however, the black sheep usually has no idea that they are taking the fall for someone else’s wrongdoing. Instead, they begin to believe they are defective or broken; creating both a tragic and relatable journey for the reader.

Must the protagonist be the one placing blame?

No. On occasion the protagonist may be the scapegoated individual struggling to prove their innocence and escape from a toxic situation. At other times, the protagonist may be placing blame upon another character unjustly. Either way it creates extreme dramatic pressure.

Is a scapegoat just another word for an antagonist?

Yes and no. While both can be used as a decoy, there is a key difference between the two. 

Test this in your own story by asking yourself these questions: 

• Does your protagonist have no internal conflict when they defeat the main villain? 
• Will your protagonist achieve their true desire once the bad guy has been eliminated?

If the answer to either of those questions is no, then the antagonist is probably functioning as a scapegoat. Your protagonist is obsessively fighting an enemy outside themselves because it is easier than focusing on their false belief from within. 

Look at the scene you are currently writing and ask yourself: am I having my character fight anyone just so he/she won’t have to face him/herself?

Your story weapon: Sacrificing the excuse

You can’t resolve a story or a character’s internal dilemma while the scapegoat is still in the room. To get to the climax and resolution, you must take away the excuse. 

Let’s say your protagonist thinks they can’t develop their ambition because of an overbearing boss. Then that boss gets ousted. Now your protagonist has all the freedom they want, but they still can’t get out of bed. 

Remove the scapegoat from the picture. Burn down the hometown they thought was holding them back. Strip away the psychological shield so it completely comes crashing down on them. When there’s no one left for them to point a finger at, your characters will have to face what it actually costs to get what they really need. 

Here are some scapegoat examples to consider:

Relational scapegoats (blaming others)

1. An ex-fiancé who shattered my confidence, so I will never date again.
2. A wealthy rival who stole my one big opportunity, proving the game is rigged.
3. A flaky business partner who ruined my credit, so I refuse to take financial risks.
4. A charismatic mentor who betrayed my trust, so I will never follow anyone again.
5. A dependent spouse who keeps me tied to a boring, safe corporate job.

Situational scapegoats (blaming the environment)

1. A small-town gossip mill that won’t let me outgrow the mistakes I made at 18.
2. A rapidly changing technological landscape that I am too old to keep up with.
3. A highly competitive industry where “nice guys finish last,” so I have to be ruthless.
4. A crushing pile of student debt that forces me to play it safe instead of chasing my art.
5. A family scandal from the 90s that still taints my last name in this town.

Personal scapegoats (blaming the surface flaw)

1. A visible physical scar that I am convinced makes me entirely unlovable.
2. A bad knee from college that prevents me from moving forward physically and mentally.
3. A self-diagnosed “fear of commitment” I wear like a badge, so no one gets too close.
4. A fear of flying that conveniently keeps me from ever leaving my comfort zone.
5. A biting sarcasm that I excuse as “just being brutally honest” to push people away.

To identify your protagonist’s hidden scapegoat, focus on their complaints. 

What is one sentence that they repeatedly use every time they fail? For example, “If only I had more money,” or “If only my partner would listen to me.” 

Then, ask the chilling follow-up question: If you suddenly gave them what they wanted, what internal flaw would they still be battling? 

The external thing your character is pointing at (their excuse) is the scapegoat they are using to avoid doing the hard work inside themselves.

Push your protagonist until they can no longer hide behind their excuses and are forced to confront the deeper truths driving their behavior. To explore character transformation, emotional wounds, and story structure in greater depth, join one of my next workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day, and learn how to create stories that resonate long after the final page.