Many people have been asking whether they should read this book. Some fear having their image of Atticus Finch tarnished and some are concerned about the circumstances surrounding the book’s publication. I suggest that people read it but with an appropriate mindset.
DO NOT read
this as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Superficially it might seem to be one; after
all, Jean-Louise is twenty years older when she goes to visit her 72-year-old
father Atticus in Maycomb. We learn what
has happened to some of the characters encountered in TKAM: Jem, Dill,
Calpurnia. And, yes, it is a type of
coming-of-age novel, like TKAM. This time Jean-Louise learns that her father
has flaws: “[She had] confused [Atticus]
with God. [She had] never saw him as a
man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings” (265). She also learns that she
has to let her own conscience guide her; at first she declares, “I need a
watchman to lead me around” (181) not realizing until later that her
conscience, not some other person like her father, must be her guide because
“’Every man’s island, . . . every man’s watchman, is his conscience’” (265).
DO read the
book as “the parent” of TKAM, which
is supposedly what Lee called it. GSAW was written before the book that
has become so beloved by so many. Parts
of GSAW appear verbatim in TKAM:
“Instead, Maycomb grew and sprawled out from its hub, Sinkfield’s
Tavern, because Sinkfield . . . induced
[the surveyors] to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here,
add a bit there, and adjust the center of the county to meet his
requirements. He sent them packing the
next day armed with their charts and five quarts of shinny in their saddlebags –
two apiece and one for the Governor” (43 GSAW;
133 TKAM). At other times, minor wording changes are
made. “when the time came for John Hale
Finch to choose a profession, he chose medicine. He chose to study it at a time when cotton
was one cent a pound . . . Atticus . . . spent and borrowed every nickel he
could find to put on his brother’s education” (89 GSAW) becomes “he invested his earnings in his brother’s
education. John Hale Finch . . . chose
to study medicine at a time when cotton was worth nothing” (9 TKAM).
Certain events are obvious parallels:
Aunt Alexandra hosts a Coffee to welcome her niece in GSAW whereas in TKAM she hosts the Missionary Society; in GSAW, Jean-Louise observes her father at a meeting of the Maycomb
County Citizens’ Council from “her old place in the corner of the front row [of
the Colored balcony], where she and her brother had sat when they went to court
to watch their father” (105).
The Tom
Robinson trial figures prominently in TKAM
but it is mentioned only briefly in GSAW
and with a major change. In the precursor
novel, Jean-Louise mentions, “he won an acquittal for a colored boy on a rape
charge” (109); in TKAM, Atticus has
only a moral victory. There are other
interesting deviations; for example, in GSAW,
when Scout is twelve she wonders, “Would Jem cry? If so, it would be the first time” (135)
whilst TKAM has Jem crying after the
guilty verdict at Tom Robinson’s trial:
“It was Jem’s turn to cry” (214).
I would add
that, like Atticus, GSAW is a flawed
parent. The first one hundred pages
meander: Jean-Louise returns home and
visits with Aunt Alexandra, Atticus, and Henry Clinton, her wannabe
husband. It is only with Jean-Louise’s
discovery of her father’s reading of a pamphlet entitled The Black Plague (101)
that the novel seems to find its focus. Even
then, in terms of plot, very little happens:
there are a lot of long conversations especially between Jean-Louise and
her uncle and her father. Certainly in
terms of plotting, GSAW is weak. In these conversations, much may be beyond
the understanding of readers. Uncle Jack
launches into a long history lesson about Southern racial history; realistic
dialogue it is not. And Atticus and his
daughter argue about the Tenth Amendment and a Supreme Court decision, though
neither is ever explained; only someone versed in states’ rights and the Brown
vs Brown ruling will be able to make sense of that discussion, even though it
is part of a climactic scene.
That is not
to say that GSAW does not have
strengths. A twenty-six-year-old Scout
is exactly as readers of TKAM would
expect her to be. She refuses to submit
to conventional expectations of women so she and Aunt Alexandra continue to
butt heads. The flashbacks to Scout’s
adolescence are wonderful, probably the best part of the novel. Especially because of when it was written,
the book provides a very clear view of what most whites in Alabama in the 1950s
would have felt in the face of the civil rights movement; even Jean-Louise
admits she was “furious” when she heard about the Supreme Court’s school-desegregation
ruling because “’there they were, tellin’ us what to do again. . . . to meet
the real needs of a small portion of the population, the Court set up something
horrible that could – that could affect the vast majority of folks. Adversely
‘” (238 – 239). It seems that
Jean-Louise shares her father and uncle’s “’constitutional mistrust of
paternalism and government in large doses’” (198).
Which
brings us to Atticus’ racist comments which have already been quoted so often. He does say, “’Do you want Negroes by the
carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?’” (245) and
“’Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to
accommodate Negro children?’” (246) and “’you do not seem to understand that
the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people’” (246). We even
learn that Atticus once joined the KKK though Jean-Louise is told, “’Mr. Finch
has no more use for the Klan than anybody . . . You know why he joined? To find out exactly what men in town were
behind the masks. . . . all the Klan was
then was a political force. . . He had to know who he’d be fighting if the time
ever came to –‘” (229 -230). He introduces a speaker at a meeting of the Maycomb
County Citizens’ Council, a speaker who proceeds to spew hatred, though Atticus
tells his daughter that he considers that man a sadist but he let him speak
“’Because he wanted to’” (250). This is
certainly a harsher portrayal of Atticus than that found in TKAM, yet he is certainly recognizable
in his willingness to let people speak their views regardless of his agreement
with them. Jack’s description of his
brother certainly sounds like the Atticus of TKAM: “’- the Klan can
parade around all it wants, but when it starts bombing and beating people,
don’t you know who’d be the first to try and stop it? . . . The law is what he
lives by. He’ll do his best to prevent
someone from beating up somebody else . . . but remember this, he’ll always do
it by the letter and by the spirit of the law’” (268).
GSAW may have people returning to TKAM for a closer look at Atticus. He, for example, didn’t choose to defend Tom
Robinson; “the court appointed him” (165).
What about his comments about the racist neighbour, Mrs. Dubose: “’She was [a lady]’” (116)? And he does comment on the KKK: “’Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a
Klan, but it was a political organization more than anything’” (149). Perhaps the reader, like Jean-Louise, has to
see Atticus in a more realistic way, has to “welcome him silently to the human
race” (278)?
Despite
being disenchanted, the reader should not see GSAW as totally disheartening. The title of the book, a Biblical
allusion, refers to the prediction that Babylon will fall. The implication is that Maycomb and the South
will fall; Uncle Jack says as much to his niece: “’The South’s in its last agonizing birth
pain. . . . It’s bringing forth something new . . . but I won’t be here to see
it. You will. Men like me and my brother are obsolete and
we’ve got to go’” (200). Jean-Louise is
colour-blind and has no difficulty expressing her views; she may be seen as the
new moral compass.
So . . .
read Go Set a Watchman, keeping in
mind that it is an unedited manuscript from which To Kill a Mockingbird was derived.
Written in the 1950s, it provides a look at Alabama in the early years
of the civil rights movement from a white person’s point of view. It may not be a pretty picture but one need
only look at the news to see that much has not changed. It may not become such an integral part of
school curricula but, as an early draft, it can be especially useful for
writing classes. If I were still
teaching, I could see many discussions:
Why does the first person point of view in TKAM work so much better than the third person used in GSAW?
Why is plot structure so much more effective in TKAM? Why would the
portrayal of Atticus have been softened in TKAM? Which novel is more effective in developing
the theme of disillusion? When there is
a discrepancy between events, why was the version in TKAM chosen?
So . . .
read the book, and like Jean-Louise is required to do, become your own
watchman/woman.
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