Go Set A Watchman

I really wasn't sure if I was going to read Go Set A Watchman. I certainly procrastinated on it long enough. I kept up-to-date on everything surrounding its publication. Was Harper Lee of sound mind when she signed for it to be released? Is publishing the book morally acceptable? Would it make a good companion to To Kill A Mockingbird?

Now that all the dust has long been settled on the controversy (and I was given a free copy of the book, so I didn't have to feel like I was rewarding the publishers for possibly exploiting an elderly woman not long before she died), I decided it was time to pick it up.

I was... surprised.

In it, Scout is all grown up and realizing that Atticus wasn't the god-like figure she always made him out to be. He had faults. In fact, he wasn't the anti-racism warrior that Scout saw him as during the trial in TKAM. He was just a really good lawyer who believed his client.

I am amazed that some editor somewhere read GSAW and was able to pinpoint that Scout's childhood would be a better story. To be fair, the memories of childhood were some of the best bits in GSAW. I especially liked the one when they pretended they were visiting preachers. Those memories were so vividly described.

But TKAM ended up being about the trial, which I believe to be the pinnacle of Scout's Atticus-worship. It was almost as if the two books were meant to come out as a set. One to build up this childlike idealism and then one to destroy its foundation.

I don't know how I feel about it. I've spoken to many who felt that GSAW ruined Atticus, who was a childhood hero for them. That was part of my fear in reading it. I never worshiped Atticus like others did, but I did find him to be a good example of doing what is right, no matter who opposes you, something I always strive to do.

But I think that ruining Atticus was kind of the point of GSAW. Not when she first wrote it, as it was the original novel; the larger themes are about questioning your gods, those you look to for moral guidance. Atticus had to be ruined for Scout in the book for her to grow. But as we all grew up reading TKAM, seeing Atticus through Scout's eyes, he was shattered for us as well.

And I think that's the genius of Harper Lee. And whoever that editor was.