Go Set A Watchman
Harper Lee
William Heinemann
‘Equal rights for all, special privileges for none’: few can forget these words from Atticus Finch, the lawyer who steadfastly pleads a falsely-accused black man’s case in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Neither can his now-adult daughter, Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, who in Go Set A Watchman returns to Maycomb County to find that everyone, even Atticus, has changed. It is unsurprising that a young woman returning to the rural South from the big city would be disillusioned; however, the transformation of one of American literature’s most beloved heroes will shock readers as well. This destruction of idols brings the coming-of-age tale that began with Mockingbird full circle, painting a wrenching picture of the entrenched bigotry that continues to stymie a supposedly free and equal society, even now.
Scout herself is no glowing paragon of anti-segregationist ideals. Beyond reassuring her uncle that she doesn’t ‘want to run out and marry a Negro or something’, she agrees with her father that Black Americans are ‘backwards’ and not ‘ready’ for integration. These seemingly monstrous devolutions are partly explained by the fact that while billed as a sequel, Watchman was reportedly a first draft of Mockingbird, and its characters and themes are therefore still inchoate. Accordingly, the novel is a largely amorphous jumble of anecdotes and observations, essentially plotless for the first 100 pages, for all it highlights Lee’s talent for humorous banter, character observation, and the moving descriptions of halcyon childhood scenes that made Mockingbird a classic. Scout’s distress at her father’s inclinations takes centre stage; however, this conflict pales in comparison to the turmoil of the Civil Rights Movement as lived by Black people (which she admits she hasn’t ‘paid any attention to’). Hailed as timely by some commentators, Watchman’s characters’ stalwart attempts to preserve segregation are in fact a misleadingly peaceful counterpoint to the bloody struggle of race relations in the United States, then and today.
Words: Mònica Tomàs
