Go Set a Watchman

Just as Scout learned as a child that it is a sin To Kill a Mockingbird, she learns in her adulthood that life needs a watchman, a person who can illuminate a pathway through the darkness of human behavior. Harper Lee’s second novel, the rest of the Atticus Finch story, pits father against daughter in a coming of age story that touches on a seminal moment in time in that relationship. Atticus Finch is not a racist; if that is the only message a reader walks away with after finishing Go Set a Watchman, the reader is unable to “get” the story Harper Lee tells.

The story begins with Scout coming home for a visit, during which she quickly learns that the more things in her life change, the more things from her childhood stay the same. She has high expectations for Maycomb and its people, and lofty, unreachable expectations for her father, Atticus. Scout has romanticized her father and is devastated when she thinks that he has failed her idolatry of him. She lashes out at her beloved Atticus, still seeing him through her childish eyes, rather than as an adult. Scout admits that “I did not want my world disturbed, but I wanted to crush the man who’s trying to preserve it for me.”

The turning point of the story occurs in the courthouse wherein the most well-known scene from To Kill a Mockingbird occurs. Once again Atticus is at the front of the room, but this time he’s there for a community meeting that includes discussion of the legislation and the NAACP. The agenda focuses on changes coming to the South, changes that can create equal opportunity for all Southerners, not just the white folks. Uncle Jack tells Scout that “… it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days,” a concept that Scout is reluctant to accept. Scout believes that change is today this/tomorrow that, but her Uncle Jack and her father, Atticus, help her to work through the difficult concept that change is a process, not an event.

Her uncle clarifies for Scout that “… the white supremacists fear reason, because they know cold reason beats them.” A reasonable person can see more than one side to an issue, and Atticus taught Scout to reason. Scout’s beloved Atticus has not changed: he adapts to what goes on around him and plots a wise course because he does know how many of his fellow citizens believe what he believes and need a voice of reason in what can only be turbulent times. Scout is incredulous that she can engage in a screaming fight with her father, but all he says when she comes to pick him up from work is “Ready?” Scout’s thoughts are revealed: “You can say ready to me. What are you, that I tried to obliterate and grind into the earth, and you say ready?”

The looming battle is clear: “Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.” Dr. Finch reminds Scout that she’s a rarity, a truly “color blind” Southern girl. He reminds her that “The only differences you see between one human and another are differences in looks and intelligence and character and the like. You’ve never been prodded to look at people as a race, and now that race is the burning issue of the day, you’re still unable to think racially. You see only people.”

What Scout has forgotten is that Atticus “… certainly hoped a daughter of mine’d hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all.” As father and daughter prepare to go home, Atticus says to his daughter, “I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it’s not true.” He knows that the future is going to be difficult with citizens taking sides in a centuries old battle, but he’s proud that his daughter will be a voice of reason.