By Anne Waldron Neumann
Hurray! Harper Lee, author of the 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” probably America’s best-loved novel, has, at 89, published a new novel.
Well, “Go Set a Watchman” is not exactly new. And it’s not exactly very good. It was written before “Mockingbird” though it introduces Atticus Finch 20 years later, in his 70s. When Ms. Lee submitted “Watchman” for publication in 1957, “My editor … was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood,” Ms. Lee reported. “She persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told.”
Doing as she was told, Ms. Lee won a 1961 Pulitzer and enduring fame. Scout — or Jean Louise, as Atticus calls her when he’s being formal — became “Mockingbird’s” first-person narrator, thereby blending a child’s viewpoint with Ms. Lee’s adult perspective. Through Scout’s eyes, for example, we see her father’s gallant but doomed attempt to defend a black man falsely accused of rape.
Meanwhile, the manuscript of “Go Set a Watchman” languished in Ms. Lee’s safe-deposit box until her attorney unearthed it last fall. “Watchman’s” central character is Jean Louise at 26. She has returned home from New York City to “Maycomb” (really, Monroeville, Alabama, Ms. Lee’s actual home) to discover that the father she idealized is an unapologetic racist.
Atticus Finch is racist? Your view of “Mockingbird” probably depends on your age and ethnicity (would you care to describe those views using this paper’s online comments, found below?). But Atticus’s racism in “Watchman” matters terribly, many readers feel, because they love “Mockingbird” so deeply. “Mockingbird” has sold more than 40 million copies in 40 languages and is widely read in high-school English courses. Atticus’s racism in “Watchman” matters because many readers find in “Mockingbird” an answer to racism.
Atticus’s racism matters because, if Maycomb is Monroeville, and Scout is Ms. Lee’s self-portrait, then, we assume, Scout’s courteous and honorable “Mockingbird” father must resemble Ms. Lee’s father, Amasa Coleman Lee. Was he racist, too?
I’ll return to this question about a real person. But a novel’s characters, especially while we’re reading the novel, do seem like real people, people with stable traits like racism or idealism. “Mockingbird’s” Atticus seems especially real although — I hate to mention this — “Atticus Finch” is really just a collection of sentences. (For those of us who know the 1962 movie, he’s also, confusingly, Gregory Peck. Gregory Peck wasn’t racist, was he?)
So suppose you love “Mockingbird” and accept that its gentlemanly white lawyer is a black community’s sole savior. Must ”Watchman’s” Atticus and his racism now spoil your experience of Mockingbird? Or, to reword this question, is “Watchman’s” Atticus the same character as “Mockingbird’s” Atticus?
A high-school English teacher quoted in the July 11 New York Times apparently thinks so. After reading reviews of “Watchman,” she said she felt queasy about “Mockingbird”: “This has been my favorite book of my whole life, from when I was a student to being a teacher. It’s sad to think that Atticus’s character is going to be tarnished.”
Maureen Corrigan, reviewing the novel for NPR, grieved similarly: “All I know for certain is that ‘Go Set a Watchman’ is kind of a mess that will forever change the way we read a masterpiece.”
But “Watchman’s” Atticus and “Mockingbird’s” Atticus are different collections of sentences in different contexts. Whether they’re based on the same real person or not, they themselves are not the same. For example, Ms. Lee may have decided to give “Mockingbird” a clearer moral by doing her best to give “Mockingbird’s” Atticus only positive traits.
Meanwhile, Ms. Lee herself, “Mockingbird’s” characters, and “Watchman’s” characters are all products of Alabama in the first half of the 20th century and have corresponding traits. Naturally, “Mockingbird’s” Scout uses the “n” word. Naturally, “Watchman’s” Jean Louise finds returning to Maycomb painful: by the 1950s, Jean Louise, like Ms. Lee herself, has been transformed by living in New York. Naturally, as “Watchman” proves, Ms. Lee’s New York transformation has not been complete.
Then who do you think undergoes the greatest moral transformation by the end of “Mockingbird”? Is it Scout, who learns that, though her father can’t always protect innocence, it’s still a sin to kill a mockingbird?
No, a more crucial moral transformation as “Mockingbird” ends may have occurred in you, the reader. It’s far more important what happens to you after you close a novel than what happens to the pretend people inside it.
So if you fear — despite my eminently rational arguments — that any moral transformation you underwent after reading “Mockingbird” could be spoiled by reading “Watchman” — because, after all, none of us are strictly rational — then by all means don’t read it.
Meanwhile, here’s someone else who was transformed morally after “Mockingbird’s” publication. According to the July 11 New York Times, Ms. Lee’s father “was moderate by the standards of the times” though he did support states’ rights and held segregationist views. After “Mockingbird” appeared in 1960, however, “his views softened, and he started campaigning for redistricting in the county to protect disenfranchised African-American voters.”
Had Harper Lee revised “Watchman” before publishing it, “Watchman’s” Atticus might have reflected these positive changes. Fortunately, our own political views can also always be revised.
Anne Waldron Neumann is the author of “Should You Read Shakespeare?” and teaches creative writing in Princeton.
