When I wrote my earlier post comparing Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird with her just-released earlier novel, Go Set a Watchman, I was relying on a number of reviews and analyses I had read about the new book. I hadn’t gotten my own copy yet. Since then, I’ve read Watchman, which reinforced the perspectives I got from others and added to them. Watchman isn’t a great book—it probably isn’t even a very good book in its published form—but it’s an intelligent book with sharp analyses of attitudes in the south during the 50s, specifically after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The contrast between the versions of the south and the pervasiveness of racism portrayed in the two books is what most resonates for me—the glossy, airbrushed version in Mockingbird versus the wrinkles-and-all version in Watchman. My general takeaway from the contrast between the two books is, we need to grow up about the way we perceive racism in this country—how substantial it is, how much it underlies the way we as individuals perceive the world and the way our society functions. We need to look racism directly in the face, acknowledge it and do whatever we can, not to eradicate it completely since that’s impossible, but to lessen its impact by working to correct its most destructive aspects.
Genuine spoiler alert: I’m going to be talking about Watchman in some detail, so if you plan to read the book and don’t want it pre-summarized and analyzed, this is a good time to stop reading.
In Watchman, a 26-year-old woman who is living in New York returns to her home town in the south for a visit. At the beginning of the book, the town and its inhabitants appear to be as she remembered them, especially her father Atticus Finch whom she idolized as a child and continues to idolize as a young adult. In her eyes, Atticus was a man who transcended his time and place, someone who saw beyond race and class, whose judgement was absolutely fair and even handed unlike most white inhabitants of the town, including some wonderful but flawed adults she knew growing up.
As the book continues, she begins to see that Atticus isn’t the man she believed he was. To her horror, she finds he’s a segregationist and something of a bigot. He’s against school integration and making it easy for southern blacks to vote—or he’s against doing those things right away, anyway. He wants changes to happen in their own sweet southern time, not on the timetable set by the Supreme Court and the N.A.A.C.P. To paraphrase one of today’s much-used phrases, for Atticus, White lives matter, but Black lives — or at least the quality of black lives — don’t matter nearly as much, especially if improving their lives has a negative impact on the privileges he and other southern whites have come to expect as their birthright.
What is this young woman who grew up idolizing her father to do? The answer the book gives is, grow up. She has to realize that Atticus is a flawed man, like other men, who harbors some attitudes she finds despicable. In fact, according to the book, if she is to grow into an independent woman, it’s absolutely necessary that she understand and reject some of her father’s attitudes.
Here’s what I find most interesting. When Harper Lee’s editor read Watchman, he told her the novel wasn’t ready for publication. His favorite parts of the book, he told her, were the places where she looks back nostalgically at her youth, and he tells her to expand on those, make them the focus of her new book. That’s exactly what she does, and the result is the beautifully written, emotionally gripping Mockingbird. We love young Scout, who is between six and ten in the book, not 26 as in Watchman. And even more, we love Atticus, who is portrayed as the perfect man his daughter idolized. Scrubbed out are his flawed attitudes she sees as an adult, the attitudes she needs to understand and reject to grow beyond her childish view of the world.
When Harper Lee wrote Mockingbird, she gave us a version of Atticus and the town that she knew was untrue, or at least incomplete. She knew there was a deeply racist underbelly to the story, but she gave us—and we gratefully read and accepted—the glossy, idealized child’s-eye view. That’s a big part of why we love the book. Sure, racism was pervasive in the south of the 1930s, but in the book we saw a good man who was untouched and unsullied by the racially poisonous atmosphere around him. It gave us hope that good people like Atticus, as well as people of good will who weren’t quite as enlightened as he was, would lead the way toward a post-racial America. Watchman presented a more pessimistic view of reality.
In many ways, that’s where we are today. We’re wrestling with two versions of America. In one—the Mockingbird version—we have racial problems we need to correct but we’re on the right road, and many of us white folk, like Atticus, are ready and willing to do the right thing no matter what the consequences to our lives. In the other—the Watchman version—we need to grow up and realize racism is so deeply ingrained in the structure of our society, and its consequences are so valuable to those of us who benefit from racial inequities, that we can’t depend on gradual change brought about by “good people” in white society. We need to make some radical, sometimes dangerous transformations if we hope to move away from our structural inequality and toward a better, fairer society.
The first version, the Mockingbird version, the one I read and taught a number of times, is pleasant and soothing to this white guy who has always been an advocate for civil rights but also has benefitted from the privilege that comes with my skin color. The second version, the Watchman version, is far more disturbing and dangerous, but I believe it’s closer to the truth.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2015.
Atticus Finch, either version, was not so much different than our most beloved founding fathers and later “champions” of racial equality. Washington and Jefferson were both slave owning landed gentry. Both recognized slavery as a stain on the emerging nation but elected to kick that can down the road rather than reconcile their belief and maundering lack of statesmanship, Nearly a hundred years later Lincoln also preferred to delay abolition until pressed to the wall as the US spread westward. Nearly a hundred years after Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson waffled on the Voting Rights Act until he also caved in to pressure from the same groups Atticus resents in Watchman.
Racism is as much a part of our national DNA as violence. We choose to go slowly, take our time, kick the can down the road; as our armies wreak havoc across the globe, our police run amok in inner cities and any lunatic can choose the most effective type of gun necessary to shoot up a political gathering, an elementary school, a movie theater or a church. Reading and analyzing Lee’s two novels tell us, more than anything else, nothing has really changed and our childhood heroes are simply flawed humans.
Good, thoughtful write-up. There’s always been something about Mockingbird that seemed off to me. Much too tidy.
Rick Spanier, your last point about childhood heros is one that I agree with so strongly and try to make whenever possible. People are not heros, by and large. They can do incredibly heroic things, but elevating individuals to ‘hero’ status is glossing over their inherent humanity. I’m glad Watchman came out, even under possibly dubious circumstances.
“soothing to this white guy who has always been an advocate for civil rights but also has benefitted from the privilege that comes with my skin color”
Must be all those taxpayer dollars you’ve put in your pocket all your life generating all the guilt.
Those of us not dependent on the government are proud that our parents provided opportunity and that we have used those opportunities to earn and succeed.
Man card revoked from the author.
Thanks, What, Again for a front row seat to witness what white privilege looks like:
“Those of us not dependent on the government are proud that our parents provided opportunity and that we have used those opportunities to earn and succeed.
Your words demonstrate:
“The term [white privilege] denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white persons may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice.”
That does not take away from or deny the great things that your parents may have done for you. Rather, it suggests that, if you look beneath the surface, your opportunity to earn and succeed may be more complex than you think.
This article and the following comments seem not to understand exactly what fiction is and how it works. In this case, as Safier says, the narrative points of view in the two books differ, and so does the subtle use of the many possibilities available in the complex English verb. Have you considered the likelihood that Lee intended “To Kill a Mockingbird” as aspirational? In any case, both are novels, and consequently much more sophisticated than journalistic, political or historical reportage. Writers who choose to write “book reviews” ought to know something more about serious reading.
Jana – and what do you consider white?
Hispanics? Asians? Irish? Italian? Haitian? German? Are you making the assumption that these immigrant groups and every immigrant group, who looked and acted different weren’t discriminated against? If you think minority groups growing up in the depression and through both world wars were privileged, you haven’t been on this planet long.
Or is it just black and brown democrats to exploit to assuage your guilt?
Was it Obama’s black half or white half that provided his privilege?
Transcripts, transcripts, where are the transcripts. Ever wonder why every other secret and confidential piece of information has been hacked, stolen or otherwise revealed. But one secret, one HUGE secret can’t be found.
Not dependent on the government? Don’t make me laugh.
Do you have a driver’s license? Do you drive on roads and highways? Vote? Eat safe food? Breathe decent air? Use National Parks? Receive police protection? Borrow books from the library?
I could go on, but you get the picture, or possibly not!
Pima Mujer – obviously you are confused as to the role of government. Government works for us, I pay them, they are my/our servants. Those are services I pay for, and in the case of Tucson, possibly the worst roads in the country. We elect people to do those things and in the case of Tucson, they are all liberals. 5th poorest city in the country.
But when you become dependent on government dollars as income as many in the civil workforce have become, then the motivational hierarchy becomes very simple for those getting hung up with why they don’t succeed or feel guilty of having a high paid job basically doing nothing. The great mediocre – filling the ever growing bureaucracies, finding reasons to put the successful “white” man down and have more join them in mediocrity, by force of government.
My family grew up in a town with basically four groups. Italians, Irish, Puerto Ricans and Black. No whites, whatever that may be to you and certainly no privilege.
The confusion is all your own, W.A. And so is your response.
How amazing that you admitted in print that your first review was written before you read Go Set a Watchman. I found many early reviews that way…
Watchman is a page turner, laugh out loud funny amidst the horror of segregation at its very worst.
Perhaps the reality portrayed in adult conflict is more worthy of our attention now that Mockingbird has been out there for 55 years…child has grown up? You Can’t Go Home Again, Martha F. Barkley
PS
Principled bigot is how Isabel Wilkerson framed it in the NYTimes…Randall Kennedy suggests that Watchman could have masterpiece potentional…
I won’t be ashamed or made to feel guilt about what I cannot control.
It’s all about wealth and personal responsibility.
Like all the modern Nazi’s, you won’t acknowledge that you were born on 2nd base by virtue of your race, preferring to brag about how you hit a double to get there
The grand experiment they call America is available to all.
You fairness freaks will never hold somebody accountable if your guilt can be assuaged by whining for an unknown.
What a pitiful lot you are. You can’t accept the fact almost everybody
works hard to get where they are. The reverse is also true.
David, Just wanted you to know that Harper Lee’s editor was a woman. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/th…
Thanks for adding more ideas as your third opinion of Go Set a Watchman. We can all learn by reconsidering early reviews of the novel by Harper Lee. Somehow the adult Scout gives me a more realistic view of the times she portrayed in small town Alabama. Her lawyer father Atticus defended the down trodden and fulfilled his fatherly obligations as the young woman came home from New York City with different ideas. Typical disagreements between generations portrayed very realistically in Harper Lee’s first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, Martha F. Barkley in Charleston, SC