“Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee
I waited hard, along with a jillion other TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD fans, for the follow up to that beloved novel. I knew that GO SET A WATCHMAN is not really a sequel, but was written before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I read the controversy about Harper Lee, how she was ill, how her faculties had deteriorated, how maybe she didn’t even want the book published, but was taken advantage of by money-grubbing editors. How readers would be shocked at the attitudinal changes in Atticus Finch, a white southern lawyer who, fighting racial injustice, defended a black man in the nineteen thirties.
I found the first part of GO SET A WATCHMAN a good enough read. Scout is grown up, called “Jean Louise” now, and her reflections on her New York life as she travels home to Maycomb, Alabama, are honest and self aware.
When Scout gets home, we meet Atticus, fifteen years after he was a hero in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I won’t say what he’s become, only that, for me, he’s become hard to stomach.
And then GO SET A WATCHMAN falls apart. The grown up Scout is thrust into lengthy conversations with her father and his cohorts. They talk, and they talk, and they talk some more, using preachy, unrealistic dialogue I found distracting and snooze-inducing. Yes, Atticus has changed. But we don’t have a clue as to why, so it’s like he’s had a personality transplant. Maybe that’s how he felt to Scout, and maybe Harper Lee was trying to show that, but a reader needs more.
I could barely finish this book. But a month or so after sort of finishing, I came across a review that shed new light on Atticus’s personality change.
Richard H. MacAdams is a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, and has done extensive research on racism in the South. After reading his review of GO SET A WATCHMAN, I understand why Atticus could come across so differently in the second book. Terms like “liberal” and “democrat” and “racist” are presented in new historical lights, and my dissonance regarding Atticus’s “new found” racism is reduced. You can read MacAdams review here.
In addition to the clarity MacAdams provides on the southern racial climate, he also stresses that we readers fell in love with Atticus because Scout loved him so much in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, where we see Atticus through the eyes of an eight year old, with all the idealization that involves. And, of course, GO SET A WATCHMAN is mostly a first draft, badly in need of an astute editor.
Is GO SET A WATCHMAN a good read? I don’t think so. Is it worth reading? Yes, if you’re willing to do a little exploring to uncover its nuggets of truth.
I found the first part of GO SET A WATCHMAN a good enough read. Scout is grown up, called “Jean Louise” now, and her reflections on her New York life as she travels home to Maycomb, Alabama, are honest and self aware.
When Scout gets home, we meet Atticus, fifteen years after he was a hero in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I won’t say what he’s become, only that, for me, he’s become hard to stomach.
And then GO SET A WATCHMAN falls apart. The grown up Scout is thrust into lengthy conversations with her father and his cohorts. They talk, and they talk, and they talk some more, using preachy, unrealistic dialogue I found distracting and snooze-inducing. Yes, Atticus has changed. But we don’t have a clue as to why, so it’s like he’s had a personality transplant. Maybe that’s how he felt to Scout, and maybe Harper Lee was trying to show that, but a reader needs more.
I could barely finish this book. But a month or so after sort of finishing, I came across a review that shed new light on Atticus’s personality change.
Richard H. MacAdams is a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, and has done extensive research on racism in the South. After reading his review of GO SET A WATCHMAN, I understand why Atticus could come across so differently in the second book. Terms like “liberal” and “democrat” and “racist” are presented in new historical lights, and my dissonance regarding Atticus’s “new found” racism is reduced. You can read MacAdams review here.
In addition to the clarity MacAdams provides on the southern racial climate, he also stresses that we readers fell in love with Atticus because Scout loved him so much in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, where we see Atticus through the eyes of an eight year old, with all the idealization that involves. And, of course, GO SET A WATCHMAN is mostly a first draft, badly in need of an astute editor.
Is GO SET A WATCHMAN a good read? I don’t think so. Is it worth reading? Yes, if you’re willing to do a little exploring to uncover its nuggets of truth.
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