PULLING DOWN A STATUE:
A review of "Go Set a Watchman"
By Harper Lee
So, I read Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” recently. Since its controversial publication, due to the fact that many suspected that the aged Harper Lee was taken advantage of for a blatant cash grab, and its depiction of the beloved character, Atticus Finch. Soon, curiosity gotten the better of me in a downtown Barnes and Noble. I read the first few paragraphs and taken in by the writing, purchased a copy and immediately began reading it. For the next month or so, I made sure that no one saw the cover for fear of being called out on something. Silly, I know. Many have been upset about this “new” novel and those that read it are now literary traitors to Lee’s Legacy. (Again, with ‘legacy’. Why the f*ck does everyone think they are owed a ‘legacy’?)
There is simplicity to the writing, a story taken from Jean Louise Finch’s grown perspective as she returns to Maycomb, Alabama to visit her father. She lives in New York City and every year, she returns to visit her father who is now living with his sister Alexandria, having sold their childhood home where now sits an ice cream stand. All the touchstones of her childhood as Scout are gone here: the childhood house is gone, her big brother Jem is passed, her childhood sweetheart Dill is overseas after WWII, the family housekeeper Calpernia has retired and moved home. This style is in contrast to the highly-mistaken-as-‘complex’ writing of “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
When Calperia’s son is arrested for accidentally killing a drunk pedestrian, Atticus takes the case. But nothing is as we expect it to be in this story. Jean-Louise recalls that her father took a case when she was a child and helped free a local black man accused of rape. Here, it is discovered, Atticus’ motives are NOT the same as his “Mockingbird” counterpart. He is there to block the NAACP from taking the case. So, in the earlier case of Tom Robinson, he was not righting an injustice, he was simply doing the job asked of him. This revelation changes Jean-Louise’s view of her father, as it does us, the reader.
When Jean-Louise discovers her father attending a Citizens First meeting with her current boyfriend, with Atticus warmly introducing a racist guest speaker - she is shocked and feels betrayed and spends much of the novel after trying to cope with this discovery. She sees for the first time how racist her town is. In the most heartbreaking scene in the book, after this discovery, she visits Calpernia, the black maid she loved deeply and looked on as a mother-figure, to ask a difficult question, “The whole time; did you hate us?”
Calpernia does not answer, instead assumes the syntax of her old duties, and dismisses her.
Jean Louise then rebels, denouncing everyone, her father, and plans to move away forever. It is her uncle, Atticus’s brother Jack who works to make her see that this was always her father, that he is indeed just a human being, that she is now growing beyond her own father’s morals. In the end, she decides to keep visiting, hoping her presence will make a difference in the future.
This novel was written before Lee’s “…Mockingbird”. Meaning, this is Harper Lee’s true vision of Atticus Finch, this has always been the true Atticus Finch, and the version we got in “Mockingbird” is only the child-glorifying edifice of detached memory. I appreciate Ursula K. Le Guin’s look at the book and in a time of great segregation, how it actually raises the hard questions that “Mockingbird” did not and instead, painted a hazy patina of hero worship, maybe some self-worship, on our own racism.
This sort of reminds me of the taking down of Confederate Army statues. Where some think that we are “erasing history”. No, we are simply trying to correct that same hazy filter on our own past. History never disappears because statues fall. It disappears when we forget to look on it objectively. It is the same for these two books. Except we are now tearing down the hazy filter of liberal idealism of “defeating racism”. “Watchman” is the pulling down of the statue of the lies the US tells about itself.
Atticus is America. For we will always present a glorified version of our own morality, when, in the beginning, we used it to hide the true figure. Racism still exists in America, despite what we tell ourselves.
Lee’s book is a timely reminder that this chasing of nostalgia hides from us the harsh realities of truth. For the Jean Louise of “Watchman”, it is an evolution of her morality as her’s has grown beyond her father’s – in the end, it is long past time for Scout to grow up.
“Go Set a Watchman” is a searing reminder that the US has always been racist, and the only way we can get past it is to evolve our own morality above it. In short, “Go Set a Watchman” reminds us: it is long past time for us to grow up.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Ursula K. Le Guin Artticle: http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/08/03/a-personal-take-on-go-set-a-watchman/
