Review: Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman
There are a few people in this life you cannot bear to think about failing morally. Your mother. The Dalai Lama. Your gynecologist. Your neighborhood ice cream truck driver. Atticus Finch.
In the weeks preceding the release of the highly controversial and greatly anticipated second novel by Harper Lee entitled, Go Set a Watchman, troubling news about the plot began to leak out. In the new novel, beloved hero and cultural icon, Atticus Finch, was rumored to have become a racist, a segregationist, and even a member of the Klu Klux Klan.
For two weeks, social media websites were aflame with gossip about the book. If Atticus was revealed to be a racist monster, why should anyone read it? Wouldn’t this new information stain backwards onto the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird, destroying our hero and the great American novel forever?
The passionate reaction of my friends and acquaintances on social media sites was a heartening testament to the power of books—to the knowledge we carry as a society that stories are vital to our understanding of our culture and ourselves. To think that Harper Lee could betray us by besmirching one of our favorite characters was frightening. The gut-level instinct for most was to turn away from such a story. But in Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee makes a heart-felt and passionate case for why some people choose to keep loving a friend or fallen hero despite their betrayal or moral failure. She makes the same case for people who choose to stay in the place they were born, despite the area’s deeply-entrenched social problems.
While many of my most sensitive and intelligent friends were vowing to never read the book, I stumbled upon a comment by my friend, Justin Fortney, of Guthrie and the band Stranded at the Station:
“I’m especially not worried about the tarnishing of Atticus’ reputation. He’s never felt like a hero who can do no wrong. He’s someone who acted bravely, like good people do, and good people screw stuff up all the damn time. Atticus will be fine.”
As Uncle Finch says to a grown Scout, “You’ve no doubt heard some pretty offensive talk since you’ve been home, but instead of getting on your charger and blindly striking it down, you turned and ran. You said, in effect, ‘I don’t like the way these people do, so I have no time for them.’ You’d better take time for them, honey, otherwise you’ll never grow.” He is telling his strong-willed niece that Maycomb, and Atticus, desperately needs her to live there, and live out her convictions.
Reading the novel, I was reminded of those who choose to live in Oklahoma instead of moving to a state where the President of the United States would not be welcomed by a crowd waving Confederate flags. As her Uncle Finch says to Scout, “It takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days.”
Yes, it does. As we listen with horror to our impoverished citizens called “animals” by a local politician, watch the number of innocent black men murdered by police officers grow, see our LGTB community confronted with hatred in the name of religion, many of us wonder why we still live here. But like Harper Lee, we stay. We stay in the south—not because it is perfect—but because this is our home and our home needs us.
We are the watchmen.
